Blog by MBP Volunteer, Adam In my last post I talked about an expedition to Lakia and Simone that MBP invited me on. I didn’t mention that on that same expedition, some people from the village of Analabe, near-by Simone, reported seeing several Milne-Edwards Sifaka’s in the forest of Simone, as many as 10 living in the tangled mass of secondary forest that juts from the mountains steep southern slopes. These large members of the … Read More

Blog by MBP Volunteer, Racheal Photos courtesy of Racheal   On the Reforestation Team work starts in the nursery. There are currently 6 MBP nurseries around Kianjavato. One at KAFS and the others in nearby villages, some of which I’m still attempting to pronounce correctly; Ambolotara, Kianjavato, Antanabeloha, Vatovavy and Ambodifandramanana! Each nursery is run by its own team of people from the surrounding community and each has its own local ‘Single Mums Club’ helping … Read More

Our partner-in-education, Susie from Conservation Fusion had a genius idea make the walls of the Lavavolo Dream School out of reused plastic bottles filled by the local community with trash. Alas, it was going to be hard to get the bottle there and to find enough trash to fill 6000 bottles. So she built the school like normal people do. After talking about creating a school with bottle walls and the MBP’s need to isolate … Read More

Blog by MBP Volunteer, Julia   Our next find was a sleepy, tiny kingfisher. I was probably more excited about it than anybody else, because this wasn’t the common kingfisher we see darting over the river near KAFS sometimes. It was one of Madagascar’s pygmy kingfishers, tiny and bright red-orange all over, fluffed up roundly on a branch as it dozed for the night. These little red birds are not apparently that uncommon, but this … Read More

Blog by MBP Volunteer, Julia   Even between four vazaha (foreigners) and two guides, the first half hour of our walk revealed no lemurs at all. Undiscouraged, knowing that we had plenty of time and plenty of forest left to cover, we turned our lamps down instead towards the ground. It was disappointing at first. I was surrounded by a chorus of “ooh!”s and “wow!”s. Sheila and Adam took out their cameras and started snapping away … Read More

Blog by MBP Volunteer, Julia     Our path took us along one of the transects the varecia team usually walks, that is to say, straight through the woods and up the mountain. It had been a drizzly kind of week, so the trek uphill was difficult and slick, just muddy enough that the ground felt the slightest bit unstable under our feet. What felt like solid footing could at any second shift and slip … Read More