Vallée de Mai staff member attends training in Madagascar |16 July 2018

Shanone Adeline, the Vallée de Mai invasive species technical officer, recently had the opportunity to attend the first session of the course entitled ‘From Mauritius to Madagascar: building regional capacity for biodiversity conservation and monitoring”.

The course took place in Madagascar from April 2-20, 2018 and was funded by the Durrell Academy (Mauritius) in collaboration with the Vahatr Association. The combination of the internationally renowned Durrell Academy and the Madagascar focused Vahatr Association made for an interesting course.

Madagascar is well known for its wealth in biodiversity and endemism and the 14 participants (Seychellois, Mauritian and Malagasy) and their five Vahatr Association tutors had the opportunity to camp for two weeks in Ambohitantely Reserve. The reserve is situated north-west of the capital Antananarivo and its 5,600 hectare area includes 1,800 hectares of primary forest and 3,800 hectares of grass land. The reserve is threatened by slash-and-burn agriculture, irrigation for rice paddies and poaching.

Participants were divided into four groups which were rotated every two days. The groups were taught about different monitoring methods used for different species groups. For herpetofauna, the study of amphibians and reptiles, pitfall trapping and day and night transects were used to count and identify specimens. Small mammals were monitored using various traps, and participants learnt about flea and tick sampling. Bird monitoring was done using mist-netting, audio counts, and bird observation. Entomological monitoring was done by sweeping and beating of vegetation, aquatic trapping, sifting, black lighting and flight intercept techniques. They also learned about plant identification and vegetation monitoring using quadrats and transects. After the two weeks of fieldwork the participants spent a week in Antananarivo for lectures, and learned about conservation projects in different regions of Madagascar.

Shanone found the course to be very beneficial, stating that she has developed particular skills and gained new knowledge which she will be able to apply to her work in the Vallée de Mai.

She particularly enjoyed learning about the different monitoring methods for entomology, vegetation and herpetofauna.

SIF