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Mo' about Mad

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LORDS, LADIES & LEMURS:
Mo' Than You Ever Wanted To Know

Lost World
Mad’s ancient species have been preserved by isolation. Some 200 million years ago, the island was a piece of “Gondwanaland,” lodged between what is now East Africa and India. When the super-continent was torn apart by plate tectonics, Mad splintered off into the Indian Ocean and came to rest off the coast of Africa, where it floated, free of human inhabitants, until 2,000 years ago.

There are over 200,000 species on the island living in habitats ranging from rainforests to deserts, and mountaintops to mangrove swamps. Its countless hidden valleys and microenvironments gave evolution a diverse playground perfect for inventing unique species.

Living Fossils
Mad is one of the 12 most important countries for biodiversity on the planet. The key to this richness is its endemism–80% of Mad's plant species are not found anywhere else. Many Malagasy fauna are more closely related to Asian and South American stock than to Africa, even though Africa is just 200 miles away. Mad's mammals are the prize exhibit in the island's incredible menagerie. Biologists often refer to the island as a 'museum,’ housing 'living fossils.’ This is because almost all the mammals on the island today closely resemble groups that were once on the mainland but have since been replaced by more advanced species.

Ancestors of our Ancestors
Lemurs are the great-great-great-grandparents of monkeys. They belong to a group of primates called the prosimians, a word which means 'before monkeys.’ Lemurs are to a biologist what the old master painters are to an art critic: they may not be contemporary, but historically they are very important and they are still beautiful to look at.

But the newest settlers were even more exotic, in their way. Instead of paddling over from nearby East Africa, people came from Malaysia and Indonesia, skirting the coasts in open boats or outrigger canoes–a journey of more than 4,000 miles. "This strikes me as the single most astonishing fact of human geography," Jared Diamond (author of Germs, Guns and Steel) once wrote. "It's as if Columbus, on reaching Cuba, had found it occupied by blue-eyed, blond-haired Scandinavians speaking a language close to Swedish."

Steak 'n' Rice
When people first settled in Mad, the culture they brought with them depended on rice and zebu (cattle with the camel-like hump). The rice came from Asia, and remains the staple diet. Zebu, from Africa, is the spiritual staple–the link with the ancestors, and the most important measure of wealth. Rice and zebu cannot be raised in dense forest, so the trees were cut and burned to make way for farms, and after the soil’s nutrients were used up for farming, pastures. This practice of slashing and burning, called tavy in Malagasy, has continued to the present day, leading to widespread deforestation and massive erosion.

Since independence in 1960, Mad's population has doubled and the remaining forest reduced by half. Only about 10% of the original tree cover remains. All of Mad’s endangered species are concentrated in the last 10%. October, being the end of the dry season, was burning month. The farmers were burning off brush and undergrowth so that when the rains came, fresh green shoots that zebu love to eat would spring up. We saw many intentional brush fires on our trip.

It's A Mad, Mad World
Back in 1960, the time of Mad’s official independence from France, Mauritius, Malaysia and Mad were all among the world's poorest countries. Now, Malaysia has one of the tallest buildings in the world and Mauritius is one of the richest countries in Africa. But in Mad, nearly 75% of the island's 19 million inhabitants still live on less than a $1 per day. The much smaller island of Mauritius receives close to a million visitors a year, while Mad gets less than 150,000, despite its astonishing landscape.

Although Mad is a poor island cursed with red, infertile soil, it has a remarkably rich Indonesian and African cultural fabric of 17 diverse tribes who speak one language but many dialects. And new species of lemur are still being discovered! Fortunately, thanks to a stable government since 2002, foreign aid and tourism is on the rise. For those of you who would like to read about an inspiring local development effort, please check out www.zahana.org.

Sources and Recommended Reading:
Antipode: Seasons with the Extraordinary Wildlife and Culture of Madagascar, by Heather E. Heying
The Aye-Aye and I: A Rescue Mission in Madagascar, by Gerald Malcolm Durrell
The Eighth Continent: Life, Death, and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar, by Peter Tyson
Lords and Lemurs, Mad Scientists, Kings with Spears, And the Survival of Diversity in Madagascar, by Alison Jolly
Maverick in Madagascar, by Mark Eveleigh
Madagascar, 8th Ed: The Bradt Travel Guide, by Hilary Bradt (9th Ed soon to be out)
“The Path of Stones: The Race for Madagascar’s Jewels” By Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, October 2, 2006
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