The incessant rain was becoming too much to bear especially given the steep and slippery terrain, so I asked my naturalist guide Theo to find a place where we could rest.
I was in a pristine rainforest known as Ranomafana in the central highlands of Madagascar on a three-week trip in April to observe and photograph the natural history and geology of south central Madagascar. We sat protected by rain, beneath the eaves of a primitive cabin once used by a scientist who the local villagers considered “the mother of Ranomafana”.
That lady was none other than Dr. Patricia Chapple Wright, the world’s leading lemur expert, who’d spent time in these cabins in the mid 1980s while searching for extinct lemurs and in the process discovered two new species.
I had no knowledge of Wright, or the amazing work she had done for the conservation of this 145 square mile rainforest, which along with a 500 square mile buffer zone is home to many endangered species. Those include several species of lemur that she almost certainly saved from extinction. As a result of Wright’s determined efforts, Ranomafana National Park was created by her in 1986 and became a World Heritage Site for its unique biodiversity in 1992.
Lemurs are our primate cousins that never evolved into Homo sapiens but possess 90% of our DNA. They had been the least studied primates, since they are only found in Madagascar where they evolved for over 80 million years in relative isolation.
While in Madagascar, I had made up my mind to reach out to Wright and thank her for her yeoman service to science and conservation.
Upon my return to New Jersey, I emailed her lab in Stony Brook University, New York, where she is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Primatology.
In my letter, I expressed my sincere intent to meet her and perhaps interview her for FORBES WOMAN AFRICA. My letter to her was more successful than her own early efforts to meet the chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, when as a young scientist she had naively attempted to write to Goodall in Tanzania.
She had simply addressed her mail to “Jane Goodall, Gombe Stream, Tanzania” and perhaps that mail still sits in a dead letter office in Tanzania.
To discover the real Patricia Chapple Wright I read up on her in every media source available. I watched the movie Madagascar: Island Of Lemurs narrated by Morgan Freeman that featured her.
The BBC series on Madagascar which showed her work with lemurs was a great supplement to my knowledge of the flora and fauna there. Her first book High Moon Over The Amazon: My Quest To Understand The Monkeys Of The Night was an interesting read about her childhood, her “hippie” life in the 60s followed by a long stretch as primate scientist and raising a daughter as a single mother in the jungle.
This book revealed her warm persona, her motherly instincts, her love for nature and her sacrifices to achieve scientific credentials through hard field work in Manu National Park, Peru, in the 70s, a good two weeks journey from civilization.
Her second book, For The Love Of Lemurs: My Life In The Wilds Of Madagascar, gave me an idea of her amazing years observing, documenting and studying the behavior of lemurs, especially the golden bamboo lemur and the greater bamboo lemur both of whom she discovered in Ranomafana.
It was an amazing read covering the difficulties of a young woman scientist in the middle of a rainforest in a politically isolated land with multiple tribal customs and taboos.
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Her scientific journey began four decades ago in New York City when in 1968, as a young housewife on her way to a Jimi Hendrix concert with her husband, she got trapped in a Greenwich Village pet store, Fish &amp; Cheeps, during a rainstorm.
She eventually went home owning an owl monkey that she had fallen in love with at the store. It was the counter culture era in the United States with anti-war protests, hippie culture, women’s rights and African-American equality movements. Therefore raising a monkey, albeit an exotic one, was not considered unusual.
The young Wright was a social worker in New York despite having a biology degree from Hood College in Maryland. As Barbara J. King, nature commentator at NPR (National Public Radio) put it: “That connection with an owl monkey led to a radical life change. Eventually Wright headed to graduate school and then to Madagascar to do research. She has discovered new lemur species and helped create a national park — all while helping the local people along the way. Her efforts have blossomed into a worldwide movement to save the lemurs, considered to be among the most endangered vertebrates.”
After raising the owl monkey for a year she wanted to find a mate for it. Not finding much information on the subject in libraries, she reached out to the anthropology department in CUNY (City University of New York) and came to know that owl monkeys are natives of the Amazon and jungles of Central America. The young Wright decided to take her painter husband and new-born daughter, Amanda, to Brazil to find a mate for her owl monkey. The family eventually came home with a mate and soon the monkey pair had an offspring.
Wright’s observation that the male monkey took all offspring-raising responsibilities defied common perceptions among primatologists that only females nurtured offspring. Her curiosity of this behavior led her to travel to Costa Rica for several months, again with her young family, to study owl monkeys. She came back with sufficient information to publish a pioneering research paper. Her attempt to publish was spurned because she was not a bona fide scientist as she did not have an advanced degree. So she began her PhD studies at CUNY under the tutelage of Dr. Warren Kinzey, a well-regarded scientist.
Her field studies took her to Manu National Park in Peru, where she spent nearly two years studying the behavioral aspects of owl monkeys. Her book High Moon Over The Amazon details her experiences in Peruvian rainforests including stories of facing jaguars, vipers and army ants while raising a young daughter.
Later, working as a research associate for Duke University’s primatology lab, she was sent to the Philippines and Borneo to study the Tarsier monkeys of Southeast Asia. Upon her return, her professor assigned her to Madagascar to search for a new species of lemurs, and especially the greater bamboo lemur, considered extinct.
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This assignment began her three decades of field work in Madagascar which had been closed off to Westerners for more than a decade in the 70s. The economic infrastructure had fallen apart, there were no paved roads and people resorted to slash-and-burn subsistence farming, which meant slashing and burning the rainforest.
Wright was so frustrated with Madagascar and writes: “My journey was just one disappointment after another, until I came to <a href="http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/centre-valbio/about_us/ranomafana.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ranomafana</a> in the Southeast. I stopped in a village because it had hot mineral springs and I needed a bath. Later, the villagers guided me into this gorgeous forest, where I camped. In the forest, I spotted something that I thought was the animal I’d been searching for. It wasn’t. It was actually a species new to science, the golden bamboo lemur. Not long after that, I did see a greater bamboo lemur. It wasn’t extinct after all.”
In 1989, she became a MacArthur Foundation “genius” Fellow. In 1995, she was awarded the Chevalier d’ Ordre National (National Medal of Honor of Madagascar) and in 2004, the Officier d’ Ordre National from the President of Madagascar in recognition of her conservation work.
She is busy commuting between two continents; she is the founder of Center ValBio, a modern research campus in the rainforest of Madagascar. As professor of anthropology and standing member of National Geographic’s Committee on Science and Exploration, she is today considered the world’s top primatologist and lemur expert.
Conducting over 40 biological expeditions in Peru, Sarawak, Philippines, Paraguay and Madagascar over the past four decades, she is the author of several research papers focusing on behavior, predation, rainforest ecology, climate change and conservation studies especially of Malagasy lemurs.
In 2013, Wright was one of only 26 resident members to gain election to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States. In 2014, she won the Indianapolis Prize for Conservation, the most prestigious award for nature conservation. She has written many books including Madagascar: Forests of our Ancestors, Tarsiers: Past, Present and Future and Girl Power: Ladies Led in the Lemurs. &#8211; Written by Ramdas Iyer

The Professor Who Saved An African Rainforest

Flying over the 400-mile wide Mozambique Channel that separates Madagascar from the African continent, my heart raced at the prospect of visiting a remote island that separated from the African continent some 165 million years ago.
Imagine an island more than 1,000 miles long in a blue tropical ocean uninhabited for most of its history. Forests cover vast areas, interspersed with swamps where eight-meter-long crocodiles lie in wait to prey on pygmy hippopotamuses. In the rain forests and in dryer parts of the island live some of the strangest primates to have ever existed on earth. Some 110 species of these lemurs live throughout the island and range in size from the world&#8217;s smallest primate, weighing about one ounce, to a lemur the size of a gorilla (now extinct).
Peering out of my aircraft window, I watched the stratocumulus clouds tower over the many swollen rivers draining the rainwaters as we descended towards Antananarivo (Tana), the capital of Madagascar located in the cool central highlands. With golden paddy fields blanketed by green clusters of trees, I was descending into what appeared to be a paradise of forests, paddy fields and rolling hills.
At the arrivals area, I was surprised to be greeted by faces that displayed a unique blend of African and Indonesian bloodlines. First populated 1,600 years ago by ancient sailors from Borneo, in today’s Indonesia, its early history is being slowly peeled by anthropologists one excavation at a time.
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Nearly all the species here evolved in isolation since it broke off and drifted away from east Africa many million years ago. What I found here is a lost world of unique animals and plants, unseen by humans until their first arrival.
My planned take-away from this trip included photographing colorful chameleons, trekking the lush rainforests, navigating spiny thorn forests and climbing the spectacular rock formations. At the end of it all, what left me with a deeper sense of this country was its unique people following ancient customs, despite their wanton destruction of a paradise.
My guide in Antasibe, Maurice Ratsesakanana, was instrumental in me tracking down the apex lemur, indri. Its haunting calls are reminiscent of the songs of the humpback whales. Each morning in my bungalow, at the Hotel Fenny Ala at the edge of the rain forest, I woke up to its call. The indri is the largest lemur in existence today and tracking and photographing them in rain was a trophy to be had. Indris have never been successfully bred in captivity and this is the only place on earth that one can see these unusual primates.
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Maurice also exposed me to some of the 600 amphibians and reptiles that inhabit the forest, most of them endemic to Madagascar, meaning found nowhere else on earth. Frogs of every imaginable color and pattern leapt in this wet jungle. Chameleons, some brilliantly colored, and others shades of mottled brown, crept invisibly about. The largest can capture mice and birds, while the smallest, measuring only an inch, feeds on insects.
More than 80% of Madagascar’s 14,883 plant species are found nowhere else in the world. The rain forests had many orchids growing on tree barks and stems. Maurice indicated that three-fourths of Madagascar’s 860 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchid" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">orchid</a> species are endemic, as are six of the world’s eight <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adansonia" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">baobab</a> species. I found orchid nursery’s lining all along the Antasibe road, simply harvested from the rainforest each day.
At the World Heritage rain forest of Ranomafana, Theo Farafidison, my guide, educated me on so many aspects of the fauna there. Theo worked with filmmaker David Attenborough during the shooting of the BBC series there. Almost all the amphibians and reptiles in Madagascar, half the 300 birds and all its 110 species of lemurs are endemic. Theo and I spotted a Parson’s chameleon that was almost two feet long and capable of grabbing birds with its sticky tongue. I could not help but coax it to walk on my arms, a small violation of the park’s rules. The bamboo lemurs are a specialty here, along with seven other species.
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My personal highlight was that of grabbing a six-foot tree boa at night while we were looking for nocturnal lemurs and chameleons. He was quite docile and surprisingly comfortable in my hold. After studying him in my confines, I gently eased him on to a tree, not realizing that they hunt on the ground. After photographing many species of frogs, scores of geckos, including those that mimic leaves, several chameleon species, five snake species, including a very large Madagascar tree boa, I moved to the drier side of the highlands. The unique animals of this country, especially the tree boa constrictor, are a target for pet suppliers from all over the world.
Some of the amazing landscapes I found in the country’s national parks included spectacular rock massifs, canyons, aquatic environments, savannahs and dry lands. Isalo, Zombitse, Kirindy and Andatringa come to mind as places that cannot be missed. Waterfalls abound, cascading down tall cliffs into rivers and lakes, the central highlands are a mosaic of woodland and savannah, while the eastern regions are covered in dense, humid rainforest.
In my quest for soaking up this paradise I swam in cool pools inside canyons, trekked the Tsaranoro massif, a sheer rock 800 meters tall known for world-class rock climbing, went sapphire prospecting on river banks, walked in wet, dry, semi-humid and spiny forests enjoying everything from insects like the endemic kung fu cricket, which takes on a martial posture when approached by the diverse ethnic groups that populate this island.
One great adventure that will last in my memory was my attempt to reach the spectacular limestone karst formations of Tsingy de Bemahara in the rainy season. It is an impenetrable wilderness of limestone spikes and sharp rocks that dominates the North West. The Tsingy is an ancient 200-mile long coral reef lifted from the ocean and carved over the millennia by wind and water into dagger-edged pinnacles. Crossing rivers on barges and driving through the dirt roads that had become three-feet deep streams during the rainy season, I reached this remote area to be hailed as the first tourist to arrive there that season. A nine-mile trek and climb ensued my visit to this world heritage site from the top looking down since all road access was inundated.
Deforestation has been present on the island since its colonization by humans, approximately 2,000 years ago, with 90% of the original forests lost. With an unprecedented population growth, extreme poverty (one of the highest in the world), and a brewing political crisis, the nature of the island is helpless and besieged by multiple fronts including corruption at the highest level. There is a police stop almost every few miles; they find something wrong with every vehicle in order to squeeze a few arriaris out of innocents and crooks alike. Thankfully, they do not bother tourists. One interesting behavior that I wish to write about is that of the gendarmerie (national police) who offered a full ceremonial salute when all our papers were in order.
In addition to the traditional system of slash and burn deforestation, which allows local people to open forests to cultivate, international players in cahoots with local officials selectively log rosewood tree species and have become the main threat for the biodiversity of the island. Lorries of hardwood leaving forested areas forced me to enquire about its legitimacy to everyone I met. They all shrugged almost helplessly even though their future was being stripped one day at a time.
Other threats include killing lemurs for meat, poaching reptiles and amphibians for the pet trade (the ploughshare tortoise fetches $200,000), habitat alteration and the clearance of forests, primarily for firewood and charcoal production. En route to the rainforests of Antasibe, I could see virgin rainforests burning outside the limits of the park for agriculture and cattle grazing that brought tears to my eyes. At every turn during my trip, my driver Tony Rebetsitonta, reflected on the different forested areas that had disappeared in his 25 years of driving around the country. It is anticipated that all the island’s rainforests, excluding those in protected areas and the steepest eastern mountain slopes, will have been deforested by 2025. As a result, several charismatic species such as chameleons and lemurs that evolved for millions of years here may become extinct by the end of the century.
The urgency to conserve the habitat has long been noticed by western scientists and conservation funding for Madagascar is at its peak. From protecting flora, fauna, habitats and large swathes of remaining forest, organizations are finding new ways to compensate the locals, educate them on sustainable land use and above all deal with a complex system of taboos that hold back progress.
While at Ranofamana National Park, I came to realize that this large virgin rainforest was protected and later converted into a park by none other than Dr. Patricia Wright of Stony Brook University in 1980, while studying bamboo lemurs as a post doctoral research worker there. This is another example of a driven woman scientist challenging government officials, locals and vested interests to create a legacy for mankind.
By the 16th century, the central highlands where the bulk of Madagascar’s population resides had been largely cleared of their original forests. It was small wonder that I saw red top soil getting washed off into the rivers from the air with no roots to hold them down. More recent contributors to the loss of forest cover include the growth in cattle herd size since their introduction around 1,000 years ago.
I met a professor from the University of Pretoria who is studying land grabs and cattle rustling in Madagascar and did not want his name publicized. This is a country where people still keep their wealth in cattle and not cash. He told me that rustling cattle is big business and as a result big groups of heavily-armed men attack villages and run away with the several hundred heads of cattle. I am told that the Malagasy people register their Zebu cattle at birth with the authorities, and not their own children.
Today, there are around 18 different ethnic groups living on the island. These include the Asiatic Merina (who make up over a quarter of the population), the Betsimisaraka, Betsileo, Tsimihety, Antaimoro and the Bantu Sakalava. The Malagasy language is very similar to the Indonesian language Minaan; spoken only in Borneo, it has accepted some Bantu/Swahili words over time. Their customs especially of burials, land ownership, taboos and professions are very unique for the traveler to see and experience.
The Malagasy burial customs matches closely with cultures from Indonesia where I have traveled extensively to study them. This includes periodic exhumation of the bones and huge celebrations, keeping the corpse at home until it dries before burial or placing them inside rock cairns in hard to reach places, all of which bankrupt families in pursuit of satisfying their forefathers. Their philosophy, much like the ethnic Indonesians of Sulawesi and Borneo, is that life on earth is very ephemeral when compared to the soul’s journey through the universe.
This beautiful land and its people are in a ticking time bomb of land loss, top soil erosion and desertification in a few centuries. While western agencies are doing their best to stem the degradation, it is inevitable that it cannot be reversed. Added to this, poor education, absent healthcare and a corrupt government have kept the people very poor, just living under an annual $500 per capita.
It is a paradise in retreat and all our efforts to decelerate this decline is all I can hope for these wonderful people and its other living denizens. It is a travesty created by man in his effort to conquer nature. &#8211; Words and photos by Ramdas Iyer

Tag: lemurs

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