Newswise — An international team of researchers, including Dr. Patricia Wright, the world-renowned anthropologist and conservationist from Stony Brook University, Long Island, NY, has developed a remarkable new road map for finding and protecting the best remaining holdouts for thousands of rare species that live only in Madagascar, considered one of the most significant biodiversity hot spots in the world.
In their conservation plan, the researchers not only included lemurs " those large-eyed, tree-hopping primates that have become poster children for conservation " but also species of ants, butterflies, frogs, geckos and plants.
Altogether, more than 2,300 species found only in the vast area of Madagascar " a 226,642-square-mile (587,000-square-kilometer) island nation in the Indian Ocean " were included in the analysis. Centralizing and analyzing the sheer quantity of data available to develop a map of conservation priorities provided an unprecedented analytical challenge. The results are described in the April 11 issue of the journal Science.
"This is a landmark for conservation," said study co-author Wright, professor of anthropology at Stony Brook and executive director of its Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments. "We field biologists have developed a new tool to help with conservation priorities in Madagascar. With the blessing of the progressive government of Madagascar, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Tourism will take these tools and expedite saving forests and species."
Wright, who was awarded in 1989 a highly prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship " known as the "Genius Award" " explained that through a collaborative effort, "we biologists have put to use a new tool to help focus on conserving these plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. It's not just about lemurs, fossas and frogs. It's about the whole unique ecosystem and how to preserve it for our grandchildren and the grandchildren of the Malagasy. Madagascar and its special species are not only a national treasure, but also an international responsibility."
First, the massive team of researchers collected highly detailed data to learn the exact locations of thousands of animal and plant species across the island. The researchers then used software specially developed for this project, in collaboration with a computer science researcher at AT&T, to estimate the complete range of each species. A separate optimization software, customized for this project by researchers at Finland's University of Helsinki, was used next to identify which regions are most vital for saving the greatest number of species. Species that have experienced a proportionally larger loss of habitat due to deforestation were given top priority in the resulting conservation plan because they are at greater risk of extinction.
"Never before have biologists and policy makers had the tools that allow analysis of such a broad range of species, at such fine scale, over this large a geographic area," said Claire Kremen, University of California at Berkeley assistant professor of conservation biology and the project's co-lead researcher. "Our analysis raises the bar on what's possible in conservation planning, and helps decision makers determine the most important places to protect."
The team's work demonstrates that relying on a single group of species for a conservation plan does not provide adequate protection for other species groups.
"Preserving biodiversity in the midst of tremendous pressures, such as habitat destruction and global warming, is one of humanity's greatest environmental challenges in the 21st century," said Kremen.
"Conservation planning has historically focused on protecting one species or one group of species at a time, but in our race to beat species extinction, that one-taxon approach is not going to be quick enough."
According to some estimates, about half of the world's plant species and three-quarters of vertebrate species are concentrated in biodiversity hot spots that make up only 2.3 percent of Earth's land surface. Madagascar, a developing country off the southeast coast of Africa, is one of the most treasured of these regions of biodiversity.
An estimated 80 percent of the animals on Madagascar do not occur naturally anywhere else on Earth. Half of the world's chameleons and all species of lemurs are endemic to this island. They are joined by whole families of plants, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles and frogs that are found only in Madagascar.
Added research team member and study co-author David Vieites, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and in the Department of Integrative Biology: "The diversity of Madagascar is not yet well understood, as a large number of species has been recently described, and new discoveries are made every year. For example, since our study began three years ago, some 50 new species of amphibians were discovered. Sadly, because of the high rate of habitat destruction, huge numbers of species will go extinct before scientists have a chance to document them."
Fresh attention was paid to Madagascar when, in 2003, the country's government announced an ambitious goal of tripling its existing protected area network from about 5 million to 15 million acres (20,234-60,700 square kilometers), or about 10 percent of the country's total land surface.
The MacArthur Foundation supported this project with a joint grant to UC Berkeley and the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York-based organization, whose staff in Madagascar work with government officials there to incorporate the results of this study into conservation policy. The Wildlife Conservation Society has already established several new protected areas within the country.
Ultimately, a diverse group of 22 researchers from museums, zoos, herbaria, universities, non-governmental organizations and industry contributed to this new analysis. The authors received help from an additional 62 non-authored collaborators who, in turn, were part of much larger research teams that collected the data used in this study.
"After over twenty years on the front lines of the war for preserving biodiversity in Madagascar," Wright said, "I know we need all the tools, foot soldiers, diplomacy and funding we can get. Many of the lemurs, our primate cousins, are on the verge of extinction, and we are doing our best to stop that from happening. But its not just all about saving species, its about saving humans too, and that means saving their natural resources so that forests and their species, can survive in harmony with their human neighbors."
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