Makira Expedition, Madagascar 2023
Funded by the RIDGES Foundation in partnership with Re:Wild, The Makira Expedition discovered 21 new species at the time of writing, and rediscovered over 25 other species lost to science.
Combining the expertise of an international team of 13 scientists, this expedition partnered with Re:Wild, the American Bird Conservancy, The Peregrine Fund, BINCO, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the British Museum of Natural History and Antananarivo University.
The team spent a month in the remote Makira Forest Protected Area, one of the most ecologically important intact tropical forests in Madagascar, an island famed for its unique fauna and flora.
'Covering more than 372,000 ha—an area roughly the size of English county of Suffolk or US state of Rhode Island—the Makira Forest Protected Area is one of the largest and most important areas of intact rainforest remaining in Madagascar. Makira contains some of the highest biological diversity in all of Madagascar and is top conservation priority for multiple threatened species (Farris 2014). Previous studies have surveyed taxonomic groups including small mammals (Rakotomalala et al. 2009, Murphy et al., 2017), carnivores (Farris 2014), and palms (Rakotoarinivo et al. 2009) in Makira but much remains unknown about the biodiversity of this area, particularly when it comes to invertebrates.
We conducted a rapid multi-taxon biological inventory of a mid-elevation forest site in Makira. Led by Lily-Arison Rene de Roland, head of the Peregrine Fund’s Madagascar program, in collaboration with the RIDGES Foundation, American Bird Conservancy, Re:wild, and Biodiversity Inventory for Conservation (BINCO), the project combined work on birds with taxonomic inventories of reptiles and amphibians, beetles (Carabidae, Dytiscidae, Cerambycidae, Cicindelidae, Chrysomelidae, amongst others), moths (Saturnidae, Sphingidae, Cossidae and a subset of Geometridae), spiders, aquatic invertebrates (Dytiscidae, Odonata), aquatic Crustacea (Ostracoda, Decapoda), fishes, and freshwater molluscs (Mollusca), as well as opportunistic observation of selected mammal groups such as lemurs.'
