|
'May I announce to you that Madagascar
is the naturalist's promised land? Nature seems to have
retreated there into a private sanctuary, where she could
work on different models from any she has used elsewhere.
There you meet bizarre and marvellous forms at every step....’.
French explorer Philippe de Commerson (1771)
Madagascar
is the world’s fourth largest island, and is
recognized as one of the world’s top ten hotspots for
biodiversity. It is estimated that there are between 8,000-
12,000 plant species on the island and, of these, 80% or
more are endemic. This, combined with the fact that the
island’s natural vegetation is at risk due to high levels of
deforestation, has made Madagascar of paramount
importance to the work of RBG Kew.
RBG Kew has been active in Madagascar
for over 17 years, traditionally working on systematic
treatments
of key
families for the region. More recently the focus of RBG
Kew’s programme in Madagascar has centered on conservation and
sustainable utilisation of Madagascar’s plant diversity.
Our long term aim is to develop a team
of Malagasy botanists with the skills to support Kew’s
programme in Madagascar,
and provide a service to users of plant information in
Madagascar. In particular, we want to encourage plant
identification skills and good practice in specimen collecting,
plant naming, databasing, report writing etc. There is
a growing demand for species inventory work in particular,
and field identification skills will always be essential
to Kew’s work in Madagascar.
Please see our overview
page for more
details of the our work in Madagascar.
|
