Madagascar is a leading biodiversity hotspot with over 80% of its flora and fauna being found nowhere else on earth due to its split from the African continent 135 million years ago. This split has produced a truly unique landscape across the island, where a vast array of unique ecosystems support the rich biodiversity on the island. One of the most threatened within these is the littoral forests. The littoral forest habitat supports 13% of the native Madagascan flora, however due to an increased human presence and unsustainable land-use practices 90% of the of the littoral forest is thought to have been lost, with the remaining 10% of it found in forest parcels, which fragmented nature causes a degradation in the biodiversity of the forest fragments.

To combat this, SEED is proposing to build upon its existing reforestation project which works within the fragments of the Sainte Luce littoral forest (SLLF). In phase one of this project (which has already been completed), SEED identified that in order to conserve the biodiversity that the SLLF supports, the forest parcels needed to be reconnected by planting trees, creating habitat corridors that will allow the species within the forests to reconnect and breed outside of their isolated subpopulations.

The key species within these forests which we are aiming to protect are lemurs. Lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, and the SLLF hosts four endangered lemur species within the fragments. In creating habitat corridors that are protected from unsustainable land-use patterns such as mining, the lemurs habitat will be reconnected, significantly expanding their territories encouraging genetic diversity within the species which is vital for healthy populations to be sustained.