Our personal opinion is that these wonderful animals in Africa should not be killed by poachers or trophy hunters. We cringed when we saw two young men in line ahead of us at the Johannesburg airport carrying four very large gun cases as checked baggage. We knew that most of the animal reserves do not have any fences or barriers at all between them and this includes the entire Kruger National Park and the private reserves adjacent to it. The trophy hunters simply pay a local person to drag an animal behind a jeep as bait to draw a lion or leopard to cross the unmarked boundary between the animal park and a private reserve. Once inside of the private boundary, they shoot it to bring home a stuffed head and skin.
In Madagascar, the traditional ways coupled with the poverty and overpopulation has led the people to destroy their forests at an extreme rate. While we were driving for almost two weeks, we saw several thousand square miles of land burned and the trees burned or removed. They use "slash and burn" in order to create open spaces for raising cattle and also for creating new rice paddys. They either export the trees or they burn them in kilns to make charcoal. The amount of forest in the country has diminished by more than 50% since the beginning of the 20th century. Most of the lemurs are highly endangered. They only produce a few offspring per year and most do not survive. Lemurs are wonderful sweet creatures and only found in Madagascar. Many species are already extinct.
We will help fund lemur conservation projects such as the Duke University Lemur Center. See Duke Lemur Center donations.
If you are wondering how we arranged this custom trip, we chose Kensington Tours and received assistance from Louise in the African Department. They have a website and her phone is 888-903-2001 extension 4236.
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© 2017 Jeffrey Pawlan