Born Free Foundation - Keep Wildlife in the Wild

Lemurs are beautiful but rare creatures found only on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, 250 miles off the coast of south-east Africa.  The name ‘lemur’ means ‘spirits of the night’, and many lemurs are nocturnal, relying on good eyesight and well developed hearing and smell. 

Lemur species vary in size from the tiny 30g pygmy mouse lemur which could sit on a human thumb, to the 10kg indri, with beautiful black and white fur and haunting calls.  The medium-sized 2.5kg greater bamboo lemur lives mainly on bamboo and carefully strips off the outside to get at the pith.

Through WHSmith adoptions, Born Free Foundation support The Madagascan Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments (ICTE) to encourage and promote scientific research, training, and conservation in the tropics, with a particular focus on Madagascar.

The ICTE works within the Mahasoa and Morafeno region in southeastern  Madagascar to link the fragmented habitats of the greater bamboo lemur through a corridor in order to safeguard the remaining plants and animals and sustain genetic viability

Virtually no forest persists in the immediate vicinity of the Mahasoa and Morafeno agricultural plantations. Dispersed through this landscape are isolated bamboo patches, although remaining forests and bamboo patches are being actively degraded and are predicted to completely disappear in the near future unless immediate action is taken. Greater bamboo lemurs rely on these bamboo patches to survive.

ICTE is working to raise funds for the land purchase while concurrently hiring and training local residents as rangers to protect the land from fire and poaching, establishing a powerful local public awareness campaign, and recruiting local assistance in restoration of forest/bamboo in the new corridor. With this concerted effort to purchase, protect and restore habitat, it is possible to save the greater bamboo lemur.