The country's natural history, especially its birds and lemurs, is matchless on the planet
We are at Vohipara, a marshy area in the montane rainforest of the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. Our guide, Wednesday, is playing bird calls on his ancient Sony Walkman. He fast forwards and rewinds to unerringly find the right birdsong. And the effect is astonishing.
In a couple of hours, he calls in over 30 species, many unique to Madagascar. They include several species of vangas—Red-tailed, Hook-billed, Pollen’s, White-headed, Blue and Tylas. If Charles Darwin had studied Madagascar rather than the Galápagos Islands, then the vangas’ diversity and distinctive beaks—adapted to specific habitats and food—would have made them, and not the finches, figure prominently in his theory of evolution.
Madagascar’s natural history, especially its birds and lemurs, is like nothing else on the planet. In 1771, French naturalist Joseph Philibert Commerson described it as: “[The naturalists’] promised land… Nature seems to have retreated into a private sanctuary to work on models other than those she created elsewhere. At every step, one encounters the most strange and marvellous forms.”
Madagascar is the world’s fourth largest island. Isolated for about 80 million years, wildlife, other than man, evolved from ancestors trapped on the island or from life which found its way here across the ocean. Isolation meant the absence of diluting influences, allowing the evolution of distinctive species.
A high central mountain range creates different environments: Wet in the east and much drier in the west and south. Flora and fauna have evolved to occupy the different climatic zones. The combination of isolation and different environments creates a high level of endemism, with around 80 percent of life forms unique to Madagascar.
But the former French colony is not an easy place to visit.
Internal air travel on Air Madagascar, tellingly known as ‘Air Mad’, requires negotiation of eccentric route structures and unpredictable changes in schedule. Roads are poor and frequently unsealed. The trees have a surreal look and are stained reddish-brown from the constant dust. On the main road going north from Morondava, we have to cross the river on a car ferry, which only runs when there are sufficient cars, necessitating lengthy waits.
For a part of our journey, we are shadowed by two adventurous elderly women from Italy who are travelling alone. Undeterred by the challenges and eschewing the pleasures of the beach resorts in the north favoured by French tourists, the stoic women, like us, are exploring Madagascar’s natural history.
Birds of many feathers
Clockwise from top: A group of Verreaux’s sifakas; an Oustalet chameleon and a Aldabra Fody (male) at the Montagne des Français Reserve in Madagascar
(This story appears in the 03 April, 2015 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)