Interview: In Besieged Madagascar, A Top Scientist Battles Deforestation

Primatologist Patricia Wright has spent the past 25 years studying and protecting Madagascar’s rich yet highly threatened biodiversity. She has managed to combine her research — Wright discovered two new species of lemurs — with efforts to preserve Madgascar’s beleaguered forests and the many species of flora and fauna they harbor. Indeed, Wright, a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius award,” was the driving force behind the 1991 creation of Ranomafana National Park, a 106,000-acre World Heritage Site in southeastern Madagascar that has been instrumental in preserving the island’s biodiversity. Now, as many of the country’s remaining forests are being felled in the wake of a 2009 coup and as her beloved lemurs are being widely poached for bushmeat, Wright tells Yale Environment 360 how she is helping organize the country’s residents and international conservation groups to fight back.

Read the interview