In Madagascar, creating jobs helps protect wildlife
© WWF/Martina Lippuner
Madagascar is home to more unique species than any other place on Earth. It’s also among the world’s poorest countries.
Rural communities with fewer other options often cut down trees to clear space for crops and to produce fuel—firewood to burn and charcoal to sell. The country has lost half its forests, driving ring-tailed lemurs and other endemic species toward extinction and increasing droughts, floods, and erosion.
Seventy-five percent of people in Madagascar live in poverty.
Many rely on subsistence agriculture and earn well below the global average.
In the Amoron’i Onilahy Protected Area in southwest Madagascar, WWF is helping communities pursue diversified livelihoods, like sustainable agriculture, that spare the forest. In several villages—Ambiky, Ambohimahavelona, Antanimena, Mahaleotse, and Maroamalo—WWF has provided more than 600 households with seeds, training, equipment, and microfinancing to grow vegetables to sell in the nearby city of Toliara. Community members also help patrol the protected area for illegal logging, with forest rangers earning about $2 per patrol—roughly the same as selling a 100-pound bag of charcoal.
When people can earn more from cash crops and conservation than from cutting down trees, everybody wins.
© Sara Germain/USFWS
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