WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT LEMURS?
Lemurs, whose name means 'spirits of the night', are a special group of primates, which look something like a cat crossed with a squirrel and a dog. They are found only on Madagascar and the Comoro Islands.... The largest ever living type of lemur was the Archaeoindris with its weight ranging between 350 and 440lbs (160 and 200kg). It became extinct when humans first settled in Madagascar about 2,000 years ago... The smallest lemur, the pygmy mouse lemur, weighs only 1oz (28g) but the biggest, the Indri and Diademed Sifaka, can weigh up to 15 lb (6.8kg), which is equivalent to a big cat. Lemurs are mainly vegetarian, generally they eat fruits and leaves. Some are nocturnal, whilst others are active during the day or at dawn. (..) Habitat loss is the main threat to lemurs today, as people clear their native forests for farm land. 80 per cent of the lemur's original habitat in Madagascar has been destroyed. Out of the 50 different kinds of lemurs, 10 are critically endangered, 7 are endangered, and 19 are considered vulnerable.
Dans Landscape News
... there are mangroves across the whole western coast of Madagascar, and their use varies between regions. In the north, people exploit mangroves very intensively, and the rate of mangrove deforestation is extremely high compared to in the south. The main problem is the production of charcoal, for cooking fuel. People also export mangrove wood for building materials. (..) In the south, we are developing a mangrove carbon project, which will provide long-term sustainable financing through the sale of carbon credits from mangrove conservation to the global carbon market. The money will be used to incentivize local communities to protect the mangroves. Activities for the project include delineating strict conservation zones, limiting the amount of timber that they can extract from other zones and monitoring and enforcing regulations on mangrove use designed by the communities themselves. There is also restoration work to do on the degraded mangrove forests. We are not paying these local communities to restore mangroves, but we do provide a big meal after the replanting events. However, the idea is that when they receive money from the sale of carbon credits, some of it will be used to support and to finance mangrove restoration.
In Madagascar, the challenges are mainly funding. (..) Most of the reforestation is done by NGOs: the local, regional and national governments are not doing a lot to support the restoration efforts. Our national goal is to restore 4 million hectares of degraded landscape by 2030
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