– the amount of “tavy” (consisting of clearing and then burning an area of vegetation to cultivate it) has decreased significantly since the VOI was set up.
However, we deplore the destruction of 4 ha of forest that have been burned over the past year: 3 ha in one of the conservation areas and 1 ha in one of the restoration areas (near the forest fragment where we develop the ecotourism project).
Signature by the President of Helpsimus and the founder of Impact Madagascar
Impact of cyclone Batsirai on the Bamboo Lemur program
On the night of February 5 to 6, 2022, Cyclone Batsirai hit severely the southeast of Madagascar, crossing the Vatovavy region where Helpsimus is located.
The most dramatic aspect concerns the crops since many of them have been destroyed.
It is a real disaster for the inhabitants of the commune of Tsaratanana who, for the most part, practice subsistence agriculture.
Finally, the groups of lemurs, in particular the greater bamboo lemurs, have dispersed, requiring closer monitoring.
We are currently implementing an action plan to deal with the consequences of this cyclone and limit the pressures on the habitat of lemurs which will inevitably increase in the weeks/months to come.
It consists of :
Providing humanitarian aid to the population: in February, we distributed emergency assistance (food & equipment) to more than 600 families in our 18 partner villages, which will be supplemented as needs are identified.
Supporting the restart of crops around our partner villages: apart from the rice fields which withstood the cyclone relatively well (but whose yields will still be very low because of the floods), all the other crops have been destroyed. We have distributed seeds (beans & vegetables) to 700 families who will also benefit from increased support from our agronomists. In addition, we have extended the guarding of the rice fields to our entire area of intervention: the team of guards is now made up of 68 people.
Supporting the restart of the fish farming program: most of the fish ponds have been flooded causing the escape of fish. Fifteen of them were completely destroyed. In addition, repairs will certainly have to be done on many bassins (under evaluation). Fingerlings will be distributed to the 65 beneficiaries of the program whose support will also be reinforced.
Breaking the isolation of the most remote villages caused by the destruction of tracks and bridges: the last bridge on the track before Vohitrarivo was destroyed. This bridge is being rebuilt (in concrete this time).
Supporting our partner villages so that they limit the pressure on natural resources: material has been distributed to help rebuild houses (nails and annealed wire).
Reinforcing the protection of the lemur habitat: it includes evaluating the impact of the cyclone on the forest fragments, increasing the controls on logging and supporting the village associations to control the location of the cuts and their quantity.
Reinforcing the monitoring of lemurs: the cyclone caused a significant dispersal of lemurs, in particular the greater bamboo lemurs (count: 600 before the cyclone vs. 400 after). The animals have not disappeared, they are just very scattered. And since they are also very mobile, locating and counting them is much more complicated. However, we expect a reorganization of the groups which could be more numerous after than before the cyclone due to the movement of the animals. The team of guides has been reinforced, in particular for monitoring the greater bamboo lemurs. Finally, we are preparing a study of the impact of the cyclone on the groups of the greater bamboo lemurs.
Restarting the forest restoration program / the community reforestation program and rehabilitate the plots of the beneficiaries : in 2021, our 3 nurseries produced more than 22,000 seedlings, including 7,000 seedlings of forest species, 20% of which were destroyed by the cyclone. The team of nurserymen was reinforced by the gardeners after the destruction of the school vegetable gardens.
Supporting children’s education: the school canteens will continue to operate after the Easter holidays until the summer holidays. Damage to schools will be repaired (see below).
The camp, made of wood and leaves from Ravenala, was destroyed by the cyclone. It will soon be rebuilt with slightly more permanent infrastructure: a semi-hard kitchen and a refectory with a sheet metal roof.
The entire electrical installation of the school must be replaced: the technical building (where are the batteries), the power sockets, etc. were submerged.
The wooden school building built in 2013 by Helpsimus was submerged by the floods. In bad condition before the cyclone, this building is now in an advanced state of disrepair.
The list of repairs to be done on the school building built in 2018 (on which numerous damages were noted in December 2021) has lengthened after the cyclone: floor to be redone, holes to be plugged in the walls (including 1 resulting from attempted break-in), painting, etc.
The ridges of the school building built in 2021 were blown out by the strong winds which also moved the purlins of the frame. The roof, which was thus severely weakened, is being repaired.
The camp at Volotara suffered significant damage (the refectory was blown out by the winds). It will soon be rebuilt with slightly more permanent infrastructures (like in Sahofika).
Significant damage was also observed in the schools of Sahofika and Ambodigoavy on buildings that were not built by Helpsimus:
The main school building in Sahofika was submerged during the floods caused by the cyclone (see photo above).
A wall (made of earth) of one of the school buildings in Ambodigoavy school is in danger of collapsing (due to water) and the roof is rusty. The building is old and dangerous. A new permanent school building will be built in 2022.
On February 22, a second cyclone crossed the Vatovavy region: fortunately, the cyclone Emnati did not significantly increase the toll of the cyclone Batsirai.
We will not be able to protect the lemurs and their habitat without strengthening support for local populations and guaranteeing them a minimum of food security.
We have been able to start several of the activities described in the action plan thanks to the support already obtained from several donors whom we thank warmly.
Ecotourism and handicrafts to protect the greater bamboo lemur
The population of Greater Bamboo lemurs that we protect lives in a very degraded and highly anthropized environment made up of agricultural land, bamboo forests and small portions of residual forests.
When the VOIs (village associations) were created, ecotourism was identified as a means of promoting biodiversity and developing the local economy.
Thus, since 2018, we have been developing an ecotourism project in one of the forest fragments of Sahofika on the territory of the Group 5 of Greater Bamboo lemurs.
This forest fragment depends on the VOI SAMIVAR and borders the access road to the village of Sahofika. It is located about ten km from the town of Ifanadiana.
The Group 5 is composed of more than sixty Greater Bamboo lemurs and shares its territory with a family of Red-bellied lemurs whose habituation has begun in 2018.
A floristic inventory showed that the forest fragment is home to several precious wood species such as Dalbergia baroni (rosewood) as well as endemic species from Madagascar (Ravenala madagascariensis).
The fauna inventories that are still in progress have confirmed the presence of many animal species: Mouse lemurs (Microcebus spp.), Dwarf lemurs (Cheirogaleus spp.), Ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans), forest rats (several species), Blue coua (Coua caerulea), Reynaud’s coua (Coua reynaudii), Madagascar long-eared owl (Asio Madagascariensis) etc.
In October 2019, we hired two women and one man among the members of the VOI SAMIVAR to become tourist guides. Their training, initially designed to last three years, has been extended until 2022 due to the successive lockdowns related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, out of the 3 traineeships initially planned, the tourist guides have only been able to complete one in Ranomafana National Park for the moment.
However, since their recruitment, the tourist guides have been participating in animal monitoring alongside Helpsimus agents which has enabled them to acquire a good knowledge of the flora and fauna present in the Sahofika forest fragment.
Some paths have been set up in the forest to facilitate the visit. We also built a reception office at the forest entrance with a parking lot by the road side, allowing the visitors to park as close as possible to the reception office.
While this ecotourism project aims to create additional income for local communities, its main objective is to bring value to the natural resources in an area where human activities are very intense.
The presence of ecotourists who will make a long journey to reach Sahofika and visit this forest to observe the local wildlife will help raising awareness among communities regarding the richness of their biodiversity.
The ecotourists, whose number will be limited (access to the site remains rather difficult), will live a unique experience by observing one of the world’s most endangered lemurs in exceptional conditions.
With this project, we wish not only to involve local communities in the long term preservation of their biodiversity but also inspire ecotourists among whom we hope to arouse a desire in getting involved.
In parallel to the visit to the Sahofika forest, we are developing 3 completely new craft projects in our partner villages:
– Job’s tears jewels
A French jewellery designer has created a bracelet and earrings with seeds from a plant called « Job’s tears » which grows wild in our area of intervention.
She came to our study area in Madagascar where she trained a dozen women in manufacturing these jewels which will be sold in Europe under the label she has created and help generating sustainable income for women.
Some women also make the small raffia boxes in which the jewels are presented.
– Sculptures in dead wood
This project was born from an encounter in Sahofika with a young man from the village who carved wooden animals. He requested our support to help him acquire suitable tools and improve his sculpting technique.
In the end, 3 persons benefited from the training with a Malagasy professional sculptor whose particularity is to create sculptures only from pieces of dead wood picked up on the ground.
wo women from the village of Ambodigoavy who wanted to start a similar activity were invited to participate in this project.
Their training has been suspended by the pandemic but has not, however, been completely interrupted.
The original project which aimed to make embroidered bags has indeed been temporarily reoriented towards the manufacture of cloths masks as part of the fight against the spread of the coronavirus.
The women were thus able to familiarize themselves with the use of their sewing machine. In addition, they are currently trained in the manufacture of cloth sanitary napkins. These additional activities should allow them not to be completely dependent on ecotourism eventually.
Except jewellery, handicrafts will be sold in a shop we have built at the entrance to Ranomafana national park.
This local will make it easier for artisans to sell their products by offering them directly to tourists visiting the national park. We also plan to sell other items, in particular raffia objects made by a few women from our partner villages.
The implementation of these various projects has unfortunately been greatly slowed down by the health crisis. However, this imposed delay has benefited their maturation.
The Sahofika forest fragment should be open to the visitors in 2022, as will the shop located at the entrance of the national park.
This project is co-funded by IUCN Save Our Species. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of Helpsimus and do not necessarily reflect the views of IUCN.
Opening of 3 new school canteens
In November, we opened 3 new school canteens in Ambohipo, Ambodimanga and Vohitrarivo schools.
Every canteen has an equipped kitchen (with improved furnaces, cooking pots, cooking utensils, plates, cutlery, cups, etc.) and an attic for storing foodstuffs.
The canteens are handled by a manager whom we recruited when the 3 new canteens opened. This manager is member of the NGO Impact Madagascar, our local partner on various development aid projects: management of school gardens, stock management, preparation of menus, training of cooks, etc.
Note that the 5 school gardens, which were set up in every school, produced just over 10% of the accompaniments (mainly vegetables) from the opening of the canteens until the Christmas holidays.
The children’s meal is made up of rice supplemented each day with a different food such as green beans, carrots, beans, zucchini, potatoes, Cape peas, pasta, petsai (Chinese cabbage), lentils, fish, yams,bravimboatavo (eatable leaves), etc.
The children have access to a more varied diet in the canteen than at home, where they consume virtually no vegetables. In addition, many of them eat little in the morning for breakfast (mainly cassava), especially during the lean season.
However, we will be working in the coming weeks to improve the canteen menu, which is is not yet sufficiently balanced.
The school canteens will contribute to the long-term protection of the greater bamboo lemurs:
– by keeping children in school: they will acquire a better basic education and once adults, they will be able to better manage their natural resources.
– by generating new sources of income for local populations: job creation (gardeners for school gardens, cooks for preparing meals, etc.) and purchasing foodstuffs from local producers who benefit from our agricultural program (in progress).
Update of the development plan of VOI Miaradia
The site of the Bamboo Lemur program is divided into 3 sectors now managed by 3 VOI or village associations that we have helped to set up: the VOI Miaradia, Samivar and Manirisoa.
The VOI Miaradia was created in 2018. Its area of intervention covers the territory of several groups of greater bamboo lemurs: Groups I, I ‘, I « , II, II’, III and IV.
Several groups of greater bamboo lemurs have extended their territory both outside the conservation and restoration zones defined by the management plan but also outside the limits of the VOI intervention zone.
This involved increasing the area of conservation and restoration areas located within the Miaradia sector in order to secure the new territories now frequented by lemurs.
To do this, new floristic and faunistic inventories have been carried out in order to define the new forest fragments to be included in the conservation and restoration zones of the VOI’s new management plan.
The new management plan was drawn up during several working meetings with stakeholders (VOI members, representatives of local authorities and of the national park, etc.).
These meetings were organized by our local partner Impact Madagascar, which we commissioned to monitor the VOI.
In the new management plan, the surface area of the VOI Miaradia intervention zone has almost doubled:
VOI Miaradia
Total area
Conservation areas
Restoration areas
1st management plan (2018)
541 ha
env. 25 ha
env. 400 ha
2nd management (2021)
935 ha
env. 29 ha
605 ha
In addition, over 200 additional ha of forest have been integrated into the conservation and restoration areas.
Below is the new map of the Bamboo Lemur program intervention area: in green, the conservation areas and in pink, the restoration areas.
The increase in the number of guards is explained by:
-the extension of the crop guarding to the 3 sectors of our intervention area (= 3 VOI).
-the period: the « main season campaign » corresponds in fact to the most important rice harvest of the year during which all the rice fields are cultivated;
-the good results of guarding in 2019-2020: 66 farmers (vs. 43 between November 2020 and February 2021) wished to benefit from this service during the « main season campaign ».
A field assistant reinforced the guarding team for 1 month in order to carry out several surveys.
He notably followed the 4 teams of guards in Volotara, recording for 15 days the movement of the groups 8 and 9, the number and location of the attacks as well as the position of the guards:
The floristic inventory started in 2018. It continued this year near the village of Vohitrarivo and it was carried out by a botanist of our local partner IMPACT Madagascar.
Six forest fragments constituting 6 of the 8 conservation areas of the VOI Miaradia were thus visited. Despite their state of degradation (more or less important depending on the fragments) due to very strong human pressure, there is still a significant floristic richness, including 38 species placing in the IUCN Red List (LC and VU).
About forty plant species have been listed in each forest fragment. Many of them are endemic species.
Even though few large trees are present, the potential for forest restoration of these fragments is high. Vegetation has started to regenerate in some of them thanks to the protective measures currently in place.
These forest fragments are also home to a rich and varied fauna that a biologist of IMPACT Madagascar began to inventory.
36 bird species have been identified of which more than 40% are endemic. Logically, we find the greatest number of species in the least degraded forest fragments, in particular in those where the greatest number of large trees (measuring about fifteen meters high) remain.
Thus, a young Madagascan owl (Asio madagascariensis) was observed in one of them confirming a wide distribution of the species on the site of the Bamboo Lemur program.
The presence of blue coua (Coua caerulea) has also been confirmed. So far, the species had only been observed in Sahofika and Volotara.
5 of the 6 species of lemurs identified in our conservation area live in these forest fragments. The Red-bellied Lemur has not been found but has never been spotted in the VOI Miaradia.
More than 700ha of forest protected to conserve Greater Bamboo Lemurs!
For the past 10 years Helpsimus has been constantly fighting to protect one of the largest wild populations of Greater Bamboo Lemurs (Prolemur simus) in Madagascar, a species classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List and whose numbers are now estimated at around 1,500 specimens.
We work nearby the Ranomafana National Park but in an unprotected and highly disturbed environment since it is located on the agricultural lands of several villages where we are currently monitoring and protecting nearly 500 Greater Bamboo Lemurs (i.e. around 1/3 of the global wild population). Their habitat, made up of bamboo forests they feed on almost exclusively, is extremely fragmented by the slash-and-burn agriculture locally called « tavy ».
Our primary objective is to find a balance between the needs of people and those of lemurs so that both can coexist harmoniously, while ensuring a sustainable management of the natural resources and a sustainable development of human communities. To achieve this goal, we have implemented a two-track strategy: on the one hand, we seek to protect the lemurs’ habitat, and on the other hand, we help local communities to develop alternative sources of income allowing them to reduce clearings and the pressure they exert on their environment.
In the area where we operate, habitat protection involves the creation of village associations called VOI. Their goal? Identify priority sites for conservation and those where human activities can be developed in order to define an overall management plan for the area. We have already set up 3 VOIs: Miaradia, Samivar and Manirisoa, the latter in the process of being officially formalized. Their management plans have allowed us to raise more than 700 hectares of forest into conservation andrestoration zones. These areas are made up of more or less degraded forest fragments but also contain patches of primary forest where can be found an exceptional biological diversity!
Our reforestation program launched in 2018 aims to restore the most degraded parts of the forest fragments and to create corridors between them in order to ensure the continuity of the lemurs’ habitat. We have already created 2 tree nurseries and a third will be established very soon. In 2019, more than 6,000 seedlings of twenty different species were planted!
Simultaneously, we seek to increase the living standards of the villagers so that they can stop clearing the land located on the territory of the lemur groups. Thus, we provided training to over 100 families in Improved Rice-growing System (SRA) that can double paddy fields’ yield. We also seek to improve the irrigation system upon which the results of the SRA depend directly. In 2019, several irrigation canals were built or renovated, which enabled the SRA beneficiaries from the VOI Miaradia to practice this technique in 2020 despite the severe flooding that hit the region.
We’ve been focusing on the development of vegetable crops with more than fifteen varieties cultivated by 250 families who are participating in that program and we have started a fish farming program which currently benefits to around fifteen participating families.
We are creating new Income Generating Activities as well: training on crafts production primarily intended for women (jewellery, sculptures, embroidery, etc.) and development of an ecotourism project. The latter will allow visitors to meet Greater Bamboo Lemurs in two forest fragments of the VOI Samivar and Manirisoa. Our fauna and flora inventory (still in progress) has already revealed the presence of various species of plants and animals, including 5 other species of lemurs, birds, small mammals, reptiles…
Our results so far are more than encouraging: we have noted an increased involvement of local communities in the activities that we are implementing, a sign of a growing confidence, and the support we provide seems to meet their expectations. A beacon of hope for the future of this unique population of Greater Bamboo Lemurs in which we recorded 80 births in 2019!
This project is co-funded by IUCN Save Our Species. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of Helpsimus and do not necessarily reflect the views of IUCN.
Floristic inventory on the territory of group VIII
As a reminder, the floristic inventory started in 2018. It continued last year in Volotara on the territory of the group VIII and was carried out by the botanist of our local Partner, the NGO IMPACT.
And the results are very interesting!
The vegetation on the territory of the group VIII presents a varied physiognomy. There are indeed bamboo forests, secondary forests but also primary forests (not intact) which are home to many endemic plant species: Ravenala madagascariensis, Dalbergia spp, Dyospiros spp (Madagascan precious wood) and various woody species.
Many animal species live in these forests where we can especially observe the 6 lemur species identified on the site of the Bamboo Lemur program.
In addition to this diversity there are many points of view of great interest (on the national park, on the villages etc.).
