“I just returned to the office in Antananarivo from the ‘field’ and the International Prosimian Congress (IPC), so I have been away from the internet. I attended the launch on July 31st in Antananarivo of the IUCN Lemur Strategic Plan, the first one since 1993, as a contributing editor. Kianjavato, indeed, is one of the 30 lemur priority sites.
At the IPC meeting, four of our Malagasy students presented. Further, I was one of three people honored by the Executive Committee of the IPC with the “Distinguished Professor Award” in recognition of successful Training of Malagasy Students. It was a nice surprise as well as an honor.
Kianjavato was also one of three sites (Anga and Ranomafana were the other two places to visit) picked for the mid-week field visit during the IPC meeting, and we had the highest turnout with 52 people between the three sites.
We had a surprise in Tuesday night when I instructed our immobilization team to sedate the adult male Aye-aye named “Dera”, so we could change his collar the Wednesday morning when the delegates arrived. It was raining hard and long Tuesday, and the team’s radio-collar receiver unfortunately shorted out, but they were persistent and ended up finding another unknown male Aye-aye, now named Zeppelin.
Needless to say, the delegates were overwhelmed with KAFS, Conservation Fusion’s Laliana did an incredible job of decorating the field station and organizing the teachers and 40 Malagasy students to welcome them, handing out greeting paper baskets. KAFS was the talk of the rest of the meeting. I returned to KAFS Saturday morning, and we finally changed the collar on Dera. Bozy, the female Aye-aye, is doing well with her offspring, but the baby still hasn’t ventured out of the nest. It should be soon, though. Just a bit of an update.”
–Dr. Edward Louis Jr.
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