Remember back in my first dispatch to you, when the problem of the hyacinths in Lake Ravelobe was introduced. (See Madagascar Research & Conservation post.)

We’ve been working with the local park service (called Madagascar National Parks) and other partners to come up with potential solutions. The first step is, of course, removing as many hyacinths as we can. As the easiest way to do this is by hand, we’ve coordinated with a local “Friends of the Lake” association and additional people living here to recruit and pay for pulling the hyacinths out of the water from the banks. The park service’s tractor will then take the loads and loads of the pulled plants away for disposal. This way, not only do we have conservation action to help the ecosystem here, the local economy gets a boost, too!

One early problem we had to tackle was how to keep the hyacinths near
the banks so folks could reach them easily and also be at less risk from
crocodiles. These masses of plants are so thick and heavy, it’s easy to
think of them as sideways walls of floating vegetation! We had the
idea of using grappling hooks on ropes to reach out and keep pulling
more and more of these heavy, floating mats of plants to the shore for
removal. Problem is: no hooks!

Volunteer fosa project field assistants Matt and Tommo, here via the Earthwatch Institute,
put their heads and “back home” skills together and came up with a
perfect solution. Matt, from Holland, has engineering and design
experience and Tommo has been fabricating and making tools on his farm
in Australia for more than 40 years. One morning last week they went to
market in the city of Amboromalandy (about 40 miles north of the park),
bought some re-bar (used in building and construction) and found a
welder. With their design and using these simple resources, they got the
welder to cut lengths of the re-bar and weld them together so the
“petals” could be bent in to a hook. Voila! Grappling hooks for pulling
hyacinths to the shores of Lake Ravelobe.

Even though this project has only just started, I can see that we’re
making real headway in to helping fix this problem of invasive plant
species. I hope you’ll be able to see several of the pictures I’ve sent
and that you will agree! It’s a big task, but together we’ll get it
done!

Can you name or look up any other stories of how invasive plant species have impacted nature in other places, and what was done to address the problem? What about animals?

The dental team has finished their work in Madagascar now, and we were lucky enough to have them with us in Ambodimanga (the village where our camp is in Ankarafantsika National Park) for 2.5 days. They were in Madagascar for almost 3 weeks total at different sites. While they were staying with us, the dentists treated more than 125 local people and pulled 500+ teeth free of charge during that time!

Sponsored by The Ankizy Fund (an organization founded by paleontologist, friend, and National Geographic grantee Dr. David Krause), this team of dentists and dental students from North America comes to Madagascar and our site almost every year. While they were here, they converted our meeting area, called “the refectoire” into a makeshift clinic where they could treat up to 8 people at a time.

As there is no regular dental care in rural Madagascar, some of the
people that walked to our site for treatment traveled more than 40 km
(almost 30 miles!) on foot! What’s the farthest you’ve ever walked to
meet someone or get something? How does this dental clinic “in the
field” look different than your dentist’s office?

It might not be immediately obvious, this humanitarian dental work also
can contribute to and promote conservation of the natural resources,
forests, and wildlife in Madagascar. Can you think of maybe why?

Enjoy the pictures!

That animal you see here and in my first post is called a fosa (it has also been spelled fossa). It’s scientific name is Cryptoprocta ferox. It is the largest mammalian predator and top carnivore on Madagascar. We call these animals at the top of the food chain “keystone species” because they act to hold an ecosystem together, much like the keystone of a bridge. (Homework assignment for readers: find out why Pennsylvania is called “The Keystone State.” How does this relate to a “keystone species?”) Fosa help keep a higher level of diversity and (this is a good vocabulary term) species richness in the forests where they live. We only find fosa in healthy, little-disturbed forests and the fact we captured two in one day means great things for Ankarafantsika National Park.

That’s right, today was a very exciting day for us. We captured two
different fosa! Take a look at this picture of one in a tree. These captures were great events to us for several reasons. First, it
means there are still healthy populations of these important animals
here in the Park. That means that not only is there good conservation
management here, it means that these predators are in the forest also
keeping the system healthy.

Second, it means that animals we have
studied before are still around. One of the two animals we caught (a
female) is one we have known from two years ago. That means that animals
are able to maintain stable ranges in this area, which is very
important for their day-to-day and year-to-year existence. Can you think
of why this must be?

Third, the second fosa we caught was a new male.
He’s probably five years old and is very healthy. This is valuable
information to us, too. It means that there are still more animals we
haven’t found yet here in the park. This also tells us that the
population of fosa in Ankarafantsika is probably doing well. Maybe we’ll
catch this new one again next year! Why do you think it is good news to
find out that there are both old and new fosa here in our study area?

I’ll try to send pictures of us working on these fosa tomorrow. Also
tomorrow, I’m going to tell you about the wild cat we also caught today!

It’s been a great day here in Madagascar! I hope you have a good day,
too!

Cool fosa facts:

1) They’re the top predator on the island of Madagascar.

2) Many experts call Madagascar the world’s top biodiversity
conservation priority, or “hotspot.” That’s because most species of
plants and animals here (almost 85% of them) are found nowehere else on
Earth.

3) Fosa were once thought to be nocturnal, because people rarely saw
them. Fact is, they’re just very quiet, sneaky, and hard to spot. Also,
they’re not just nocturnal–they’re active almost equally both day and
night.

4) Researchers used to think that fosa just eat lemurs. It turns out
that they can and do eat almost anything they come across in the forests
of Madagascar: birds, lizards, snakes, rodents, and other small mammals,
and, yes, lemurs, too.

5) The main threat to fosa populations in the wild comes not from other
forest animals, but from people. Madagascar has less than 10% of its
original forests left, because people cut it to clear land to grow food,
to sell the timber and precious woods, and to make room for new
settlements. This means that the fosa and the forests of Madagascar need
as much help and attention as we can give them, in order to make sure
we can preserve what’s left for the future!

Please read the blog and send in your questions in the comments below!

Pete’s Questions: Are you in Madagascar yet? If so, what are you hoping to learn or explore in this expedition? How long are you going to be in Madagascar?

I’m in Madagascar now and we’re staying really busy in the forest (called Ankarafantsika National Park). We’re trapping for the fossa (also spelled fosa) here, while also doing census of all the other animals in the forest like lemurs, birds, snakes, lizards, and chameleons.

We spend about half our time doing research and half our time working
with local communities to conduct and improve conservation and
development programs here.

This year we’re working on things like:

-Helping local people build businesses for ecotourists that come to
their Park

-Getting all the local kids in to schools

-Teaching some English classes

-Making the first documentation of villages’ family trees (along with
family and personal portraits)

-Working with a sister organization (The Ankizy Fund) to host 20
dentists from the USA and Madagascar running free mobile dental clinics.

The dentists are traveling all around the country, but always come here
for a few days, too. When they’re here, the dentists see around 200
people a day for free dental care. Their work is really important,
because there aren’t any dentists out in the countryside here.

Two
hot topics for conservation that we’re also working on are reducing the
number of animals hit by cars, and the impact of invasive species that
don’t naturally belong in this park. We’re counting the number of
animals hit by cars each day (usually speeding cars) along the road that
goes through part of the park. That helps us to convince the local park
service to install more speed bumps to make people slow down as they’re
driving through on the road that goes through part of Ankarafantsika.

Also, there’s a big lake near the center of the park called Lake
Ravelobe. It has several important aquatic animals (fish, turtles) that
live in it. Over the last 6 months, though, the number of hyacinths in
the lake has exploded. Almost half the lake is covered by these plants
now! That’s a big problem because sunlight then doesn’t get through to
the water, which can interrupt or impact the life cycle of things living
in the water.

My big worry is that not only might we lose some of the
smaller animals that live in the lake because of this, but the biggest
animals living there–the crocodiles–might not have enough food. The
last time the crocs didn’t have enough food in Lake Ravelobe was ten
years ago. When that happened before, the crocs started eating people! I
bet you can see why I’m worried about those plants on top of the water
that don’t belong there now!

What do you want to know about Madagascar and the plants and animals here?