Student Research Center - powered by EBSCOhost: The New Age o...

Some 90% of the island's plants and about 70% of its animals are endemic, meaning that they are found only in Madagascar. But what makes life on the island unique also makes it uniquely vulnerable. "If we lose these animals on Madagascar, they're gone forever," says Russell Mittermeier, president of the wildlife group Conservation International (CI).

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Through our growing numbers, our thirst for natural resources and, most of all, climate change--which, by one reckoning, could help carry off 20% to 30% of all species before the end of the century--we're shaping an Earth that will be biologically impoverished. A 2008 assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature found that nearly 1 in 4 mammals worldwide was at risk for extinction, including endangered species like the famous Tasmanian devil. Overfishing and acidification of the oceans are threatening marine species as diverse as the bluefin tuna and reef-forming corals. "Just about everything is going down," says Simon Stuart, head of the IUCN's species-survival commission. "And when I think about the impact of climate change, it really scares me."

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Well-run ecotourism can provide support for conservation, but even the best parks might be hard pressed to compete with the potential revenues from logging, poaching or mining. The strategy of avoided deforestation, however, offers much more. Rain forests like those in Madagascar contain billions and billions of tons of carbon; destroying the trees and releasing the carbon not only kills local species but also speeds global warming. Proposals in the global climate negotiations would allow countries to offset some of their greenhouse-gas emissions by paying rain-forest nations to preserve their trees. It's win-win, with both the climate and the critters getting a boost. In eastern Madagascar, CI and WCS are working together to protect about 865,000 acres in the Makira Forest with a range of carbon investors that include Mitsubishi and Pearl Jam.

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