Word: madagascars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...need the right eyes to see in the rain forests of Madagascar's Andasibe-Mantadia National 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...
...threats to wildlife on the African island of Madagascar are manifold: rampant deforestation that has stripped most of the island of its original forest cover, leaving a wasteland; a human population that is growing at 3% a year, straining natural resources and hunting animals for food, especially Madagascar's emblematic lemurs; extractive industry, including a nickel mine not far from a national park that could become the world's biggest...
...like human refugees. "Global warming is something that all conservationists are worried about," says Russell Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International. "It has the possibility to undo a lot of the work we've done." (Hear Mittermeier discuss the impact that climate change on conservation, and the situation in Madagascar, on this week's Greencast...
...some degree of warming is inevitable, so conservationists have to prepare. That means creating not just reserves, but safe nature corridors that would allow wildlife to migrate in the face of rising temperatures. Another method is to try to connect existing reserves through reforestation - a technique already underway in Madagascar, where the government is looking to vastly increase the total amount of protected land. What's certain is that we need to act. If we don't, says Schweiger, "Climate change could undermine the conservation work of whole generations...
Like last year's winner, Doris Lessing, Le Clézio has strong ties to Africa - he was born in Nice in 1940, but his family history on both sides leads back to Mauritius, an island about 500 miles east of Madagascar that has been best known in the West, at least until now, as the home of the famously extinct dodo. The son of a doctor, Le Clézio grew up in France and Nigeria speaking French and English. He began writing at the age of 8 - one of his childhood efforts, composed on a long voyage...