Reforestation Project:

In 2000, ICTE scientist Sarah Karpanty in collaboration with Patricia Wright initiated a native-tree reforestation project with local villagers and school children in the Ranomafana region in response to observations of rapid rates of forest degradation encroaching on the national park boundary. In initiating this project, we recognized that few details are available in the literature regarding community-based reforestation activities. Given this lack of consensus policy for reforestation activities, interviews were conducted in December 2000 with 9 women (mean age 46 years, Range 30-60 years) and 24 men (Mean age 42 years, Range 30-60 years) from three villages in the peripheral zone of Ranomafana National Park to determine the local need for reforestation and desire for participation in the project. The three focus villages of Ambatolahy (18 interviews), Ambotovory (3 interviews), and Ampashipashy (12 interviews) represent the spectrum of socioeconomic status among peripheral zone villages. A majority of park research and tourist guides, employees, and family members live in the village of Ambatolahy making it the wealthiest and most developed village in the region. Villagers in Ambotovory have experienced some development, health, and education incentives from the Ranomafana Park Project but are primarily a rural, agricultural community. Ampashipashy villagers are the most isolated of the three focus villages from the park project and rely entirely on slash-and-burn subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods.

Interviews were conducted by Mr. Jarred Schickling, a cultural anthropology student from SUNY Stony Brook, and a team of local guides and translators in December 2000. Both men and women hold positions of power within Malagasy village life and general society. Villagers around the perimeter of RNP utilize the forest to fulfill a variety of daily needs, from firewood to medicine. Urgency for reforestation activities appears to correlate negatively with investment by the Ranomafana National Park Project in a given village. Thus, villagers in the less developed, more rural villages of Ambotovory and Ampashipashy must travel greater than 5 km to legally harvest important forest products and correspondingly fear that all forest outside of RNP will be gone within the next generation. All villagers stated that they would prefer more trees closer to the village. Many villagers had either personally encountered a reforestation project or had been educated on the concept through the Ranomafana National Park Project in the past. Interestingly, most villagers believed that the advantage and importance of reforestation rested not in monetary results, but rather in benefits to future generations and increased sustainability. Detailed questions regarding the feasibility of reforestation were well received and resulted in the recognition that the majority of individuals will 1) only voluntarily reforest on land no longer suitable for agriculture, and 2) offer specific target species to reforest and prefer species with value as construction materials or fruit trees.

Results from community interviews were usd in designing details of the reforestation project in this region of Ranomafana. Project sustainability is sought though two methods 1) seeds, supplies, labor, and technical support are provided to village participants, and 2) school-based tree farms and science education are implemented concurrently in four schools in the region to encourage understanding by children of their parents' actions and increase desire for similar environmentally conscious actions. A laboratory manual detailing the steps of the scientific method and their applicability to reforestation, designed and revised by Malagasy and U.S. school teachers, is provided to each student and teacher. Since the project's inception, villagers in the region of Ranomafana have voluntarily planted 21,460 seedlings (e.g. grown from seed in nurseries for 1 year) of 36 different native species of value to the villagers for a range purposes and of value to local wildlife as food sources when the trees mature. School children in the region have raised and planted another 5,000 native trees during this time period on land donated by schools and local ecotourism hotels.

We have had high rates of growth and survival for most of these native species and we are currently working to summarize data that has been collected quarterly on all planted trees since 2001 to quantify growth and survival rates by species. Strengths of this community-based project included 1) low cost of supplies (<$1,500 per year), 2) strong interest and involvement of villagers, schools and local businesses, and 3) high rates of seedling survival and growth when properly managed. We did learn that seedling survival and growth during the first year is highly dependent on active maintenance, involving watering by hand and quarterly removal of invasive grasses (e.g. Imperata cylindrica) from the reforestation plots, both of which are extremely difficult and labor intensive.