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Mobilising local fisher-folk to control an upsurge in wood exploitation in Pointe à Larrée Special Reserve

Terrestrial protected area Key biodiversity area

Management effectiveness Livelihoods

Local communities Women Farmers/fishermen

Enforcement Participation Livelihoods/ Alternative economic activities

46,958.00 EUR Madagascar; Southern Africa 01 April 2021 – 31 March 2022

Protected and conserved area(s) concerned

Pointe à Larrée Special Reserve, Madagascar

The BIOPAMA AC Objectives addressed

Rapid Response activities support to maintain community livelihoods and enhanced resilience of local communities to major shocks caused by COVID-19 pandemic, whilst effectively contributing to protected areas management.

Priority need addressed

To reduce poverty-driven exploitation of wood from within the forest of the Pointe à Larrée Special Reserve.

Project activities

Previously Missouri Botanical Garden has enjoyed a trusting relationship with the fishing communities adjacent to the Pointe à Larrée Special Reserve – an area of rare littoral forest on Madagascar’s East Coast. However, markets for the sale of fresh fish have been impacted travel restrictions, introduced in an attempt to control the pandemic, leading the fisher folk to seek wood from the forest to dry their fish and timber to sell to supplement their income. To reduce this pressure on the forest, this project will to engage the fisher-folk in a mutually beneficial relationship in which the fishing families will obtain improved livelihoods while conserving the protected area. This will be done by creating a competent interface of fisher-folk with which we can work to reduce the collection of wood from the protected area without negatively impacting their already precarious livelihoods. This outcome will be achieved by: a) providing conservation-orientated, alternative sources of income from fishing; b) supporting the use of solar fish driers and more efficient wood driers consuming fuel derived from invasive alien plants; and c) supporting improved surveillance of the forest through paid daily patrols of the forest by fisher-folk trained as rangers.

The change the project implementation will bring for the protected area(s)

The overall objective of this project is that the livelihoods of local fisher-folk living adjacent to the Pointe à Larrée Special Reserve are maintained whilst they contribute to the effective conservation of the protected area. This objective will be achieved through three major changes: 1) the creation of a functional association of a local fisher-folk association; 2) much improved surveillance of protected area through intervention of local people; and 3) improved subsistence for local fisher folk based on employment in conservation related-activities and support to dry fish using wood of alien invasive trees and shrubs.

Download the project infofiche.