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All the latest news from Madagasikara Voakajy, the Malagasy biodiversity organisation dedicated to the conservation of endemic vertebrates and their habitats in Madagascar.

It was a ratsy lalana to Beparasy, or a bad road to Mangarivotra as we soon found out. This little town in eastern Madagascar, located 54km from the town of Moramanga, has recently been renamed from “Many fleas” to “Blue air” in a bid to increase its appeal. Yet appeal it had as Madagasikara Voakajy launched their third annual festival to celebrate the hard work that local Malagasy communities have been undertaking in a bid to protect their forest from the devastation of environmental threats such as slash-and burn agriculture and illegal gold mining.

As a collaboration between Madagasikara Voakajy, King’s College London, Bangor University, University of Antananarivo, The Royal Geographical Society and the P4GES project, our research team set out on the 4th of June for 2.5 weeks of fieldwork in Mangabe. We visited multiple sites in the region to measure water infiltration rates, study vegetation density, and carry out an accuracy assessment to verify our land use change maps. We were specifically looking to find out what effects land use change has on local hydrology and ecology.

A recent field trip to the Mangabe-Ranomena-Sasarotra New Protected Area has returned new information on a Critically endangered lizard – Pronk’s day gecko.

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