An overdue catalyst: Limitations imposed by COVID-19 improved capacity building in community-led environmental education in Madagascar.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus brought many primatology research programs and conservation efforts to a halt. After Madagascar closed its borders during March 2020, many on-site international project leaders and researchers returned to their home countries when their programs were delayed or canceled. Madagascar remained closed to travelers until November 2021, when it reopened to international flights. The 20-month absence of international researchers allowed many local Malagasy program staff, wildlife professionals, and community leaders to step into new leadership roles and responsibilities. Many programs that already had strong Malagasy leadership and meaningful collaborations with local communities flourished, while others either swiftly strengthened these attributes or faced challenges from pandemic-related travel restrictions. Here, we describe how the coronavirus pandemic events of 2020-2021 initiated long-overdue shifts in outdated models of internationally led primate research and education projects in communities living alongside primates at risk of extinction. We discuss the benefits and challenges of pandemic-induced changes within five primatological outreach projects, as well as how we can use these experiences to improve community-led environmental education and conservation awareness in the future.

Evaluating the impact of environmental education around Ranomafana National Park.

A total of 94% of lemur species are currently threatened with extinction and more than 17 species of giant lemur are already extinct. To help prevent the extinction of Madagascar's remaining lemurs, Dr. Patricia Wright initiated conservation programs in the Ranomafana region of southern Madagascar in the 1990s. These continued and expanded, and in 2003 were consolidated with Dr. Wright's research activities when Center ValBio ("CVB") was founded in 2003. CVB believes in the "One Health" approach in understanding the relationship between humans and the environment, and one of their core principles is that effective conservation is science-based. CVB's environmental education (EE) programs (discussed herein) operate in various primary schools surrounding Ranomafana national park (RNP). The all-Malagasy team consists of long-term conservation educators as well as young intern teachers, who together address the issues of valuing lemurs and the forests that they require to survive. In this paper, we will describe three of CVB's EE programs and evaluate their impact. The primary tool used to assess impact was an analysis of pre- and post -intervention test scores evaluated using a Kruskal-Wallis test. We show that these programs (1) are popular, (2) produce concrete outputs that can change rural villages, and (3) improve local knowledge on the importance of biodiversity and sustainable development.