- Officials in Madagascar’s northeastern Sava region say lemur is served illegally in restaurants.
- One conservationist says people use a code to order lemur meat.
- More than 90 percent of lemur species are threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
Editor’s note: This story contains a graphic image toward the bottom.
SAVA REGION, Madagascar — Two of Madagascar’s senior wildlife officials have separately confirmed that lemur meat is served in hotels in their region, despite ongoing efforts to end the illegal bushmeat trade and protect the world’s most endangered group of vertebrates.
Another conservationist said local Malagasy people use a code to order lemur meat in restaurants without saying the animal’s name.
Lemurs are found in the wild only in Madagascar and the neighboring Comoros islands, and more than 90 percent of the 111 remaining species are threatened, according to the Red List of Threatened Species from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). The list identifies 24 species as “Critically Endangered,” 49 as “Endangered,” and another 20 as “Vulnerable.” In 2012, conservationists in a workshop for the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission concluded that lemurs are probably more endangered than any other group of vertebrates.
The animals have historically been hunted and eaten by local people living around Madagascar’s rainforests, many of whom live in poverty. In some parts of the country, certain species of lemurs are protected by fady, or cultural taboo, but elsewhere, lemur meat has traditionally been a source of protein for people who may otherwise go hungry. Reports of lemur consumption in urban restaurants sprang up after the country’s 2009 coup d’état, but have since died down.
However, Mongabay’s sources suggest that lemur meat continues to be served in urban areas, at least in the country’s northeast.
Jean André Mboly, director of Marojejy National Park in the northeastern Sava region, said the bushmeat trade is still a “big problem” in his area. “Local people still enjoy eating bushmeat,” he said, through a translator.
He said that most of the illegal lemur hunting happens in unprotected forests, far from the tourist trail.
“I’m sure that all the lemurs available in the bigger towns are not from Marojejy. But there are still lots of forests that are not protected, so the hunters go there and then come back to the bigger towns to sell the meat,” he said.
In the regional capital Sambava, not far from Marojejy, the regional director of forestry, Arsonina Bera, also told Mongabay that lemur meat is served in hotels in urban areas.
“We try to manage it but it is an issue we have,” he said. “It happens at hotel level, in Sambava, because that is where the money is. And we have a few people who are making money from this.”
One of the highest-profile nongovernmental organizations in the area, Duke Lemur Center, also keeps a close eye on the bushmeat trade.
Its project manager in Sava, Lanto Andrianandrasana, grew up in a different part of Madagascar and said he was surprised when he moved to the northeast and discovered that most people he asked told him they had previously eaten lemur meat.
“I was a little bit shocked, asking people around this town, that there are still Malagasy restaurants that serve lemurs,” he said. “But it’s only for people who they know. It’s not for everyone, and there is like a code between them, like a password, to say that they want lemur.”
Andrianandrasana said he went on to try to find out for himself why people wanted to eat lemur meat.
“I asked people to see if there is a difference between chicken and lemur, and they said no. Chicken is more delicious than lemur, [according to what] they said. ‘So why do you eat lemur instead of just chicken?’ And they said, just to taste it, to say that they have eaten lemur,” he said. “So it’s like a fantasy or something like that, just to have it.”
