Pioneering primatologist in Madagascar shares decades of conservation wisdom

Patricia Wright, a pioneering primatologist who established the Centre ValBio research station in Madagascar, began her work there in 1986. As the person who first described the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) to Western science, her contributions led to the creation of Ranomafana National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

She joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss her conservation breakthroughs and the challenges the island faces during political instability and widespread poverty. “Poverty is the enemy of conservation here in Madagascar,” Wright says. Solutions are challenging in an island nation where roughly 80% of its people are impacted by poverty, as well as deforestation, fires and political violence.

To address these issues, Wright says investing in reforestation, education and health care is a way forward, but these steps must go hand in hand with conservation efforts. “I think both health and education are very important, and I started out at the very beginning, incorporating those into our conservation programs, but it has to be connected to the fact that [people] have forests,” she says.

Wright has participated in the making of numerous documentaries over the years, including Island of Lemurs: Madagascar, narrated by Morgan Freeman, and recently Ivohiboro: The Lost Forest and Surviving Alone: The Tale of Simone. In this conversation, she describes key findings from the latter two films, including how Ivohiboro, a montane tropical forest surrounded by desert, was unknown to Western science until Wright set foot there in 2016.

Films like these are a crucial part...This article was originally published on Mongabay