Tomorrow we’ll be arriving at Bezá Mahafaly Special Reserve. This is a protected area within the National Park system that contains 4600 hectares of spiny forest. Spiny forests are endemic to Madagascar and contain an odd variety of “Dr. Seuss like plants” as Dr. Lawler would put it. Bezá is very far off the beaten path (about an hour and a half down bumpy dirt and sand roads) and so it is one of the least visited parks in the system. It is for this reason that it is the perfect place to conduct research on the lemurs that live there. However, even without the presence of tourism, the forest is still impacted greatly by the communities surrounding the area predominantly through livestock grazing and tree cutting. The main research conducted there today, started by Alison Richard in 1986, is the sifaka project. The goal of this is to tag the entire population of lemurs that live in the forest so that morphometric, demographic, genetic, and behavioral data can be collected and analyzed. We’ll be spending our time exploring the forest, observing some lemurs, learning about the research protocols and sleeping in tents under the stars.
July 27, 2016 – Bezá
