Located in northeastern Madagascar, MaMaBay -comprising Makira Natural Park, Masoala National Park, and Antongil Bay-
is Madagascar’s last great wilderness and the epicenter of the island’s
unique biodiversity. Covering over 1.8 million hectares MaMaBay
contains the largest intact stands of mid to low elevation forest, the
highest diversity of lemurs in the country, half of Madagascar’s
remaining coastal forest and a quarter of its lowland forest, as well as
coral reefs, mangroves, and wetlands. Its remarkable diversity of
intact ecological systems supports habitats teeming with wildlife and
provides ecosystem services vital to both human and animal communities.
The forests of Masoala and Makira shelter a remarkable high number of endangered and rare flora and fauna species such as the Silky Sifaka lemurs, Red Owls, and Madagascar Pitcher Plants, and the endemic Fosa, while Antongil Bay thrives with fish, sharks, turtles, dolphins, and serves as an important breeding, calving, and nursery areas for Humpback Whales.
The
MaMaBay area is nationally important with its production of rice,
vanilla and cloves. MaMaBay’s forests provide timber and other forest
products to 230,000 rural people and safeguard their livelihoods by
protecting watersheds, preventing flooding in the plains, and reducing
over-sedimentation of the Bay. Fish harvests from Antongil Bay support
thousands of households.
Human
demands on the landscape – from slash-and-burn agriculture, bushmeat
hunting, and unsustainable fishing challenge the integrity of MaMaBay’s
intact forests and reefs, in turn jeopardizing the human and wildlife
communities they support.
Working for
more than 20 years in the MaMaBay Land/Seascape the Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS) and our partners have an ambitious vision for
the conservation of Madagascar’s last great wilderness and its
wildlife, which thrives in contiguous and protected forests, mangroves,
and coral reefs, buffered and connected by community areas that support
sustainable forestry, agriculture, and fisheries. More about WCS’s activities in MaMaBay