Na ratunek lemurom z Madagaskaru - Redux

A zookeeper checks on a thin and poorly kept white-fronted brown lemur (eulemur albifrons) being held in the zoo’s closed-off quarantine area at the Tsimbazaza Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Antananarivo, Madagascar, on September 26, 2023. The lemur was surrender to the zoo by someone assumed to have been keeping the lemur as a pet after it was already in poor condition, and according to the zoo the lemur will be integrated back into a social group when it’s healthy enough and less aggressive. Although illegal to keep as pets in Madagascar, thousands of lemurs have been illegally removed from their wild habitats and kept in-country as household pets or as tourist attractions at Malagasy hotels and restaurants. In 2022 a tuberculosis outbreak killed critically endangered primates, including species of lemurs never known to have had the disease. Visitors have previously been photographed holding animals at the zoo and experts suspect this is likely how the lemur caught the disease from humans. Hunting of endangered lemurs is one of the largest threats to the animals’ survival, but recent work from National Geographic Explorer Cortni Borgerson is showing that bug farming canÃłand hasÃłsaved lemur lives. In a pilot project in northeast Madagascar, Borgerson and colleagues supplied 100 households living on the edge of the Masoala National Park with bean plants that could easily be planted in disused areas around the edges of homes and between other cropsÃłspecies that were also known to attract local bugs called sakondry, or the bacon bug. This work has increased urgency as Masoala, a UNESCO world heritage forest, faces growing threats from illegal trafficking of precious woods, land clearing for cash and food crops, and the exploitation of marine resources for international markets.