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FLORA AND FAUNA
Life still precarious for pangolins despite Vietnam's illegal trade crackdown
By Alice PHILIPSON
Ninh B�nh, Vietnam (AFP) Sept 24, 2020

Madagascar's lemurs take a breather as tourism struggles
Andasibe, Madagascar (AFP) Sept 24, 2020 - Perched on a branch, the lemur blinks back intently at a group of gawking tourists disrupting a coronavirus-induced spell of tranquillity outside Madagascar's Andasibe national park.

The rainforest and animals thrived during five months of movement restrictions to limit the spread of Covid-19 in the Indian Ocean island nation.

But struggling tourist facilities breathed a small sigh of relief at the start of September when local nature-lovers were finally allowed to travel to the reserve, a four-hour drive east of the capital Antananarivo.

They now eagerly await the resumption of international flights, which bring visitors from across the world eager to catch a glimpse of the island's emblematic primates.

In the meantime, Malagasy families are using new-found freedoms to escape the city smog and admire their natural heritage.

"During lockdown, I really felt like leaving the capital and thought we should seize the opportunity to visit new places," says Linda Maminiaina, 22, admiring the lemurs with her parents and siblings.

A black and white Indri Indri, the largest known lemur, shrieked in the background. The species is critically endangered and a rare sighting.

"These lemurs are not in a cage but in their natural habitat," Linda's 20-year-old sister Prisca exclaims.

While the family gasps and points excitedly at the animals, French hotel owner Anouk Izouard still deplores the lack of visitors.

"The season is usually in full swing by now and we should be 90 percent booked," says Izouard, who also manages a restaurant and a small private reserve.

Local visitors are only using five to 10 percent of the facilities, she added. Most of her 100-odd employees remain out of work.

Coronavirus and its economic impact have also caused damage to the rainforest itself.

Ranger Pascal Pierre says local communities had started chopping down trees and selling them as firewood to make ends meet.

It is the first time he has ever come across this in over 30 years as head of the Andasibe forest guide association.

"Some also cut wood for construction, they are illegally exploiting the forest to earn money," Pierre lamented.

Logging could destroy the natural habitat of lemurs and other unique fauna Madagascar has to offer.

The country is a biodiversity hotspot and preservation of its fragile ecosystem is mainly funded by tourism, which accounts for around seven percent of economic activity.

Almost all of Madagascar's 100-odd lemur species are red-listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), threatened mainly by deforestation and hunting.

Over 30 are classed as "critically endangered", the IUCN's last category before "extinction".

Head keeper Tran Van Truong gently takes a curled-up pangolin into his arms, comforting the shy creature rescued months earlier from traffickers in Vietnam.

Life remains precarious for the world's most trafficked mammal despite the country's renewed vow to crack down on the illegal wildlife trade that many blame for the coronavirus pandemic.

Arrests, prosecutions and wildlife seizures are up in Vietnam, but conservationists warn corruption and patchy law enforcement mean the scourge of trafficking continues.

Truong works at a centre in northern Cuc Phuong National Park run by Save Vietnam's Wildlife -- a group that has rescued around 2,000 of the so-called "scaly anteaters" in the last six years.

The 27-year-old remembers the day he discovered more than a 100 tied up in sacks, cast on the ground by police outside the truck that had carried them.

"Most of them were dead due to exhaustion," he recalls, explaining they would have had no air or water. "They get easily stressed."

Vietnam is both a consumption and a transport hub for illegal wildlife in Asia.

The pangolin's scales are falsely thought to cure anything from impotence to menstrual cramps and even cancer in traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine, and its flesh is also seen as a delicacy.

But earlier this year, China removed pangolin parts from its official list of traditional medicines and there are some encouraging signs in Vietnam too.

Wildlife trafficking seizures in the country have increased 44 percent over a two-year period, according to NGO Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV).

In the first six months of 2020, 97 percent resulted in arrest.

Prosecutions are also significantly up.

The shift came on the back of a revised law in 2018 that pushed up punishments, both fines and prison terms, and closed loopholes -- an effective way to deter wildlife crime, the NGO says.

- 'Inviting failure'? -

But enforcement is still a huge issue.

In July, as fears of the pandemic spread, the government urged ministries, courts and prosecutors to apply the law properly.

Giving over-stretched agencies more to do without the resources to match, however, is simply "inviting failure", warns Dan Challender of Oxford University, a specialist in pangolins and wildlife trade policy.

Many are committed to eliminating the trade, says Ha Bui from ENV, but traffickers are still being let off too easily.

"It's often due to corruption that people get a lighter sentence."

For Save Vietnam's Wildlife director Nguyen Van Thai, the laws do not go far enough and should also target consumers.

If police find pangolin meat at a restaurant, "it is only the restaurateurs that will have problems, not the people eating it," he says.

Back in Cuc Phuong National Park, Truong spends hours making life comfortable for pangolins that have survived distressing encounters with traffickers.

He keeps them away from loud noise and only feeds them their favourite food -- ants' eggs and termites.

"I love all wild animals," he says, adding he might look to diversify soon.

"There are others that are on the verge of extinction so I want to help save them next."


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FLORA AND FAUNA
Biodiversity hypothesis called into question
Geneva, Switzerland (SPX) Sep 22, 2020
Biologists have long considered the origins and continued coexistence of the immense diversity of species found in our environment. How can we explain the fact that no single species predominates? A generally accepted hypothesis is that there are trade-offs, which means that no organism can do best in all conditions. One trade-off that is commonly assumed is that between gleaner organisms - which are able to acquire and consume more food than other species when resources are scarce - and exploiter ... read more

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