Word: indris
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Then there's the less tangible benefit that comes to the traveler himself. I write about endangered species all the time, but it wasn't until I went to Madagascar and saw an indri lemur for myself that I could really understand the value of what I wanted to defend. It wasn't until I saw how little of the Madagascar forest has survived - 90% of the country's original forest cover is gone - that I could truly fathom the risk. If environmentalism requires a revolution of consciousness, maybe that can't be done at home - even if traveling requires...
...Park--and being a suburban boy who now lives in Brooklyn, I don't have them. So I borrowed Marie Razafindrasolo's. She was my guide on a recent trip to Andasibe, where she pointed out a Parson's chameleon lying motionless on a branch and a panda-like indri dangling shyly from the top of a tree. Later Razafindrasolo took our group on a night walk through the fringes of the forest. She showed us golden Mantella frogs and leaf-tailed geckos and then, barely visible amid the trees, a pair of lemur eyes shining in the darkness, watching...
...most obviously adaptive evolutionary gifts are probably borne by the lemur, the family of small primates found only on Madagascar. The largest lemur, the indri, has humanlike hands and feet that enable it to scamper up the dense tree branches in Madagascar's few remaining intact forests. The graceful brown lemur bounds effortlessly across openings in the canopy and hangs by its knees to graze on leaves. The dextrous and stealthy white and black sifaka has springlike legs that propel it through the forest like a cat, in quiet, arcing leaps. Watching them move is a mesmerizing experience...
...land that had been cleared. The benefit is two-fold: The new forests will earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, since the trees will sequester carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the atmosphere, and eventually the forests will help rebuild the disappearing habitat for species like the indri. What's more, the project employs job-hungry villagers and gives them a financial stake in the new forests, which is key if conservation is going to work. To save the animals, you need to save the trees, and to save the trees, you need to save the people...
...extinction before we ever discover them. Our knowledge of this planet's incalculable richness is barely more complete than a flashlight's illumination of a tropical rainforest - brief and finite - but our capacity for destruction is limitless. Finally, our guide's passing beam catches the shining eyes of an indri in the night, reflecting back at us. It holds the light for a moment, and then, with a leap, it's gone...