Scientists Create Plan to Save Madagascar Species

Isolated ever since, hundreds of thousands of unique plant and animal species evolved on the island, most of which are found nowhere else in the world.

Decades of mining and slash-and-burn agriculture have threatened many of Madagascar's species, but five years ago President Marc Ravalomanana promised to triple the amount of parkland dedicated to conservation -- bringing it up to 10 percent of the country's land.

Now, an international team of researchers has combined painstakingly collected data with newly available computing power to produce a blueprint that best apportions land to save the most species.

"Basically, we have this amazing country that has incredible biodiversity unique on the planet, and we also have this amazing conservation opportunity, because the country is so favorable to protecting it," said the study's lead author, Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kremen, who began her career studying butterflies in Madagascar, said most past decisions about what land to dedicate to conservation have been made by bringing in experts to advise on the issue -- a researcher who knows about lemur habitats, for example, or where certain species of frogs live.

"I'm not critiquing this -- it's better than just drawing lines on a map," Kremen said. "But it's very difficult to optimize, because what happens is that the people who are the most eloquent spokespeople, those species will get prioritized."

In the new research, published this week in Science, Kremen and her colleagues instead aimed to find a way to include as many species as possible in the conservation calculations. They compiled data on 2,315 species in six categories: ants, butterflies, frogs, geckos, lemurs and plants. For each species, they needed information about the specific latitude and longitude where it had been spotted.

Then, they fed that information into a computer model that weighted the species according to two priorities. Species that had already lost the most habitat were given priority, and species that only existed in very small areas were also given priority. It's only recently that scientists have had the computing power necessary to examine so much data on so many species, Kremen said.

Using the data, the computer model created a map of the 10 percent of the country that encompasses the greatest number of species. Because a number of protected areas have been created already, the researchers also created a second map that took into account the land that was already protected, and mapped out the best way to apportion the remaining percentage.

The researchers also found that many of the areas that had already been protected corresponded well with the model's optimal scenario.

"That's extremely heartening for people like me, who feel the weight of responsibility," said Helen Crowley, director of the Madagascar Country Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Crowley and the society worked with the government to create the Makira Conservation Site in northeast Madagascar. "It seems like we've made pretty good decisions."

Finding the optimal configuration of conservation land is, of course, only the first step in a long process of creating conservation sites. Conservation must compete with mining -- one of the few industries in Madagascar -- and the subsistence farming that relies on slash-and-burn agriculture and provides most of the population with their livelihood.

In the Makira region, Wildlife Conservation Society teams spent eight months traveling the perimeter of the proposed site. They spoke with residents about how they use the forest, and how making it protected land would affect them, Crowley said.

"They're not just traditional parks, where you put a fence around it and that's it," she said. "The idea is to engage the local people in how the parks are managed."

The research will, however, provide a starting point for scientists to advise the Malagasy government on where to focus its conservation efforts. And it could provide a blueprint for future conservation research in other biodiversity hot spots.

"Around the world, we're going to have to do this more and more," Crowley said. "You could use this as a model."