Simons upped the ante: He asked her to search for the
extinct. About 400 miles off the coast of Mozambique,
surrounded on all sides by the raging Indian Ocean, lies
Madagascar—at 227,000 square miles, the world’s fortysixth-largest country and fourth-largest island. Some 165
million years ago, this island separated from the rest of the
Gondwanaland super-continent, creating a period of biological
isolation so significant that of the island’s 200, 000 species,
150,000 are endemic, found nowhere else on earth. Thirteen
percent of all primate species, 23 percent of all primate genera,
and 36 percent of all primate families call Madagascar home.
Scientists refer to the island as “the eighth continent.”
But it’s not an easy place for humans. According to the
World Bank, more than 85 percent of the population lives on
less than $2 a day. Slash-and-burn agriculture, called tavy, is a
common source of income, and every year nearly one-third of
the island burns. Since the 1950s, logging for timber, mining
operations, and economic development has increased so
much that when Wright arrived in the mid-1980s, less than
15 percent of Madagascar’s original forests remained. Today,
it’s around 10 percent.
Simons wanted Wright to track down the greater bamboo
lemur, one of the world’s most endangered species and one
of just three species worldwide to feast on bamboo, which
is riddled with cyanide. At the time of her arrival, the greater
bamboo lemur hadn’t been seen in years and was generally
thought extinct. But there’s a difference between being
thought extinct and actually being extinct, and in the past few
decades that difference has sometimes been Pat Wright.
Not only did Wright find the greater bamboo lemur in
1986, she also discovered a new species of primate: the
golden bamboo lemur. Finding a new species is rare, but
finding a new species of “charismatic megafauna”—animals
with widespread appeal that become poster creatures for
environmental causes—is about the same as finding a needle
in a haystack if that haystack is the size of Montana.
It was a career-making discovery and a heartbreaking one at
that. Weeks after Wright and then-assistant Deborah Overdorff
spotted the golden bamboo lemur, the sound of
chainsaws ripped through the forest. The loggers were after
one of the most expensive woods in the world, rosewood, and
were not going to stop for a bamboo-eating lemur.
Wright became a diplomat. She started with the Malagasy
government and then moved to the United States, talking
to anyone else who would listen. She met with money men
on every continent but still couldn’t raise enough. Just when the
Malagasy government was ready to quit, her MacArthur award
arrived. It was $250,000. Wright dumped all of it into the park. The
dividends continue to accrue.
for over two decades, are lousy on the ground. Because the animal’s
arm-to-leg ratio is roughly the same as an adult human’s, it spends
almost all its time in the tree canopy. So all the time Wright has spent
following lemurs has been much like her long walk—bushwhacking up
and down hills, knee deep in mud, hangovers replaced by the constant
torment of having to crank her neck backward to study the treetops.
Luke Dollar, assistant professor of biology at Pfeiffer University and
one of the world’s leading Madagascar carnivore experts, says, “What
she’s done is amazing. In the past 20 years—a very short time from
a scientific perspective—we’ve gone from knowing nothing about
lemurs to knowing as much about them as we know about any other
taxonomic group of large mammals.”
Wright has continued to do the near impossible. In 2004, she
and her team sited a new species of lemur, which was named after
her: Wright’s Sportive Lemur. And last year, she and her graduate
students found a new troop of greater bamboo lemurs, upping the
world’s total to around 125.
Wright’s work has opened up new frontiers of research for other
species of lemurs, too. Additionally, she has raised and begun to
answer all sorts of odd questions about primate old age. In relation
to Alzheimer’s, which lemurs somehow avoid, Wright is currently
investigating their medicinal habits—what plants they eat when ill
and utilize when injured. She hopes this will pave the way for both new
drugs and more protection for the forests that supply those drugs.
But her primatology work pales beside her conservation legacy. “I
can’t think of anyone who has been a better champion for the place
they love,” Dollar says. “Almost everything I know about perseverance,
tenacity, and diplomacy, I learned by studying under Pat.” The proof of
this is in the dozen schools serving 4,000 Malagasy students that Dollar
and his collaborators have built or renovated in the past two years.
It’s all this work that led to a tract of rainforest that includes
Ranomafana gaining World Heritage status in 2007. But the park’s
biggest dividend is the influence it has had on its home country. When
Wright arrived on the island there were two national parks. Because
Ranomafana has become an inspirational gold standard, there are now
46 protected areas and eighteen national parks. Building on this work,
the Malagasy president, Marc Ravalomanana, is currently helping
turn Madagascar into a model for African eco tourism. At the top of
“Primate behavior is primate behavior,”
says Wright. “It doesn’t matter if you’re
in Brooklyn or the Amazon.”
In 1986, when Wright first set out on her long walk, she had no idea
what was coming. She didn’t know that she would log 300 muddy miles.
She also didn’t know that, because of the walk’s success and the deep
bonds she formed with the island, her work there would add her name
to the pantheon of female primatologists who have the serious grit
necessary for long-term field research. Unlike Jane Goodall’s chimps
or Dian Fossey’s gorillas, Wright’s lemurs, the focus of her attention
his agenda is to increase Madagascar’s protected landscape from the
current 1.7 million hectares to 6 million hectares over the next five years,
an act that Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International,
recently called “one of the most important announcements in the history
of biodiversity conservation.” Which is to say, 20 years from now, when
some other fledgling researcher asks “¿Dónde están los monos?” the
answer will continue to include Madagascar.
And despite the long walks, horrid tropical ailments, and a brutal
schedule that keeps her traveling all year long, Wright h as pulled
through remarkably unscathed. “I’m a bit slower at the beginning of
each field season, and it takes a bit longer to get into form,” she says.
“But to tell you the truth, nothing hurts.” ✤
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