For a long time now, the Ambohitantely Special Reserve has been no more than a besieged citadel, drowned in an endless expanse of herbaceous savannah. Located four hours' drive northwest of Antananarivo, the reserve's endemic palms and orchids make it one of the last remaining dense forests in Madagascar's highlands, bearing witness to a landscape that has now disappeared. Of the 56 square kilometers set aside as a sanctuary when it was created in the early 1980s, only 14 remain, defended foot by foot.

In the morning, villagers came from the valley floor to help clear the brushwood from the firebreaks surrounding the protected area. "Every year, we have to start all over again. It's a tedious and costly job for which we have few resources," said sector manager Razakaria Ramandason, employed by Madagascar National Parks to watch over this last patch of forest with six other rangers.

In a few weeks' time, the bushfire season will begin, transforming the savannah into a carpet of ashes, soon to become generous pastures for zebu breeders and new fields for farmers in the wake of land clearance. Seen from the sky, the whole island looks like it's going up in flames.

Some 80,000 hectares of natural forest evaporated in 2023, transformed for the most part into slash-and-burn crops or charcoal for a mostly rural population with no access to energy. Year after year, the large Indian Ocean island, home to 5% of the world's biodiversity, is inexorably losing its forests. Nearly half have disappeared in 60 years, and those that remain are increasingly fragmented, according to a study published in 2018 by Ghislain Vieilledent, a researcher at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD).

"We haven't lost everything yet. But we're worried because we're condemned to playing fireman without having found sustainable solutions to protect the forests," said Bruno Rajaspera, country director of the American NGO Conservation International. This association is no insignificant player in Madagascar. It is behind most of the country's major commitments, such as the decision in 2002 to triple the surface area of protected zones to 15% of the national territory. A few years earlier, Russell Mittermeier, a primatologist employed by the NGO and a lemur specialist, had identified Madagascar as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots where urgent efforts and funding were needed.

The creation, in 2005, of the Foundation for Protected Areas and Biodiversity in Madagascar was seen as an innovation: this trust fund, with contributions from several foreign donors and NGOs, was to provide a sustainable budget for conservation. The challenge has been partially met. With a capital of $150 million (€139 million), managed in Switzerland, the fund pays $4 million a year to Madagascar National Parks. It has become the leading trust fund for biodiversity in Africa, though with one drawback: it covers only half of the needs required to manage the network of some 40 protected areas.

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