When Catherine Craig first went to Gombe in 1972, she was not thinking about silk. She was an undergraduate in a four-seat plane with Jane Goodall, flying over the Tanzanian forest where Goodall’s work on chimpanzees was changing how scientists understood animals. Craig spent six months there, learning to recognize individual chimpanzees and helping track mothers and infants through the steep woodland above Lake Tanganyika. The forest stayed with her. So did the sight of people living nearby with few choices, and the later realization that even forests thought to be protected could disappear.

Her path back to conservation was indirect. Craig became a biologist of spiders and silk, earning a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from Cornell and later joining the biology faculty at Yale. For two decades, she studied webs, foraging behavior, insect flight, and the properties of silk. It was work at the level of fibers, mechanics, and evolution. Yet the question that had formed at Gombe remained: how could habitat be protected where people had few ways to earn money?

The answer she pursued was both plain and difficult. If farmers could earn income from native silk-producing caterpillars and the plants that fed them, then habitat might become something worth tending. The idea drew on her scientific expertise, but it also required skills that science had not taught her: product design, marketing, patience, and the ability to listen across languages, cultures, and expectations shaped by past disappointments.

Craig first examined wild silk projects in India, Indonesia, and Madagascar. India showed that silk, enterprise, and conservation could be linked. Indonesia showed the importance of product development. Madagascar offered the combination she was seeking: extraordinary biodiversity, deep poverty, and a cultural history of silk textiles. It was also a country where many conservation projects had struggled, often because local people had been asked to carry the costs of conservation without seeing enough of its benefits.

In 2004, Craig began fieldwork in Madagascar, first at Ranomafana and later near Makira Natural Park in the northeast. She focused on border forests rather than the protected area itself. That distinction mattered. The farmers she hoped to work with lived outside the park, in places where conservation policy, subsistence needs, and economic uncertainty met each day. Wild silk caterpillars were often found in edge habitats, secondary growth, and small farms. That made them suitable for a model built around people’s existing landscapes, rather than around keeping people out.

The program that emerged, Conservation through Poverty Alleviation, International, or CPALI, was never just about collecting cocoons. It involved finding caterpillars and their host plants, raising native species, planting trees, training farmers, and building a workshop where women could turn cocoons, raffia, dyes, and other materials into saleable goods. The products had to be distinctive enough to reach buyers in wealthier markets. The enterprise had to return enough value locally to justify the effort. None of this happened quickly.

Craig is candid about the limits of her early assumptions. She arrived with technical knowledge and confidence. She had to learn that conservation enterprise is not a tidy extension of biology. Markets shift. Equipment breaks. Electricity is unreliable. Shipping is costly. A design that works in New York may not be practical in Maroantsetra. A project that seems logical to an outsider may not fit the rhythm of village life. Farmers needed to see a demonstration site. Elders needed to be consulted. Participation had to happen on local timelines.

Much of the project’s endurance came from the Malagasy team that formed around it. Mamy Ratsimbazafy, first hired as a field assistant and translator, became a central figure and later the director of the local partner organization, SEPALI Madagascar. Lalaina Raharindimby helped lead the women’s artisan program and product development. Over time, the work expanded beyond silk to include raffia, natural dyes, weaving, agroforestry, and biochar. When vanilla prices rose, some farmers left silk for the more lucrative crop. When vanilla prices later fell, the cocoon market offered a fallback for those who remained. The episode showed the fragility of rural livelihoods, and the value of working in a biodiverse landscape with more than one possible product.

Craig’s story is also one of institutional humility. She came to believe that many conservation programs falter because they fail to ask people what they need, or because they treat communities as instruments of a biodiversity plan. In her telling, respect showed up in daily choices. It meant spending money locally, working without project vehicles or boats, renting village houses, using public transport, and remaining long enough for people to believe the project would not disappear after a few years.

After more than two decades, Craig stepped back from day-to-day leadership. She concluded that her management had begun to limit the program’s independence. The transition is among the most important parts of the story. Many founder-led projects weaken when the founder leaves. Craig says she is proud that the work is now financially secure and governed by Malagasy leadership, with CPALI’s role shifting toward fundraising, advising, and helping connect the team to markets.

Craig’s upcoming book, Nature’s Threads, offers an account of what it took to make a small conservation enterprise persist. The work survived market shocks, cyclones, a coup, floods, a pandemic, and the slow work of building trust. Its lessons are hard-won: conservation linked to livelihoods needs time, local authority, product development, and a market willing to pay for more than a raw material. It also needs people willing to stay after the first plan proves incomplete.

An interview with Catherine L. Craig

Mongabay: What drew you into conservation and development work?

Catherine L. Craig: I have worked in the field for over 30 years on research projects from chimpanzees to woodpeckers, to ctenophores, spiders and silkworms. I have always loved doing field work since my first days at Gombe in East Africa and it has given me a very broad perspective on animal habitats and habitat loss. When working in forests in Costa Rica and Panama, I found a sense of peace and joy I have not achieved in any other environment. I strive to contribute to forest and habitat health and animal conservation in any way that I can.

Mongabay: Was there a particular moment or experience that shaped your decision to focus on linking livelihoods with conservation?

Catherine L. Craig: When working in the tropics it was clear that poverty was a major factor driving habitat loss and animal exploitation. For example, people living in isolated areas have no means of earning income. that can be used for health care, purchasing goods or food, When I initiated our program, I hoped that income from silk would provide these funds. Although it took a long time to get the program off the ground (20 years!), we seem to have achieved those early goals, and my successor has been able to expand our income generation programs to include biochar, raffia production and weaving.

When I arrived in Maroantsetra I introduced a project that could provide new livelihoods for farmers and future artisans. I planned to work in the park’s border forests but not in the parks. I knew it would “work” because silk production was very successful in Asia. I had already spent a field season at Ranomafana where we identified possible silk caterpillars and their host plants. But I had no idea how long it would take to implement the project and develop a business. I had no idea of what products we could produce that would be profitable enough to support the local people. For some odd reason none of those problems discouraged me and I simply blundered ahead.

Mongabay: What led you to Madagascar specifically, rather than another country or region?

Catherine L. Craig: I wanted to design a conservation-enterprise to ensure long-term biodiversity protection that was sustainable and not dependent on grants and donor funding. I was looking for a site that had both high biodiversity and high poverty. Madagascar is a biological hotspot as well as one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. Hence, both of my criteria were met.

Mongabay: When you first arrived, was there anything that surprised you? And how did your thinking evolve over time?

Catherine L. Craig: I was surprised to find that all of the conservation organizations were located in Antananarivo with local offices at their field sites. Most of the researchers were PhD students working on their thesis and not trained conservationists trying to implement programs. I was surprised to learn that millions of dollars had already been spent by USAID but the loss of species had continued unabated. I was also surprised to learn that most of the people introducing programs did not seem to respect local communities or include locals in planning field programs.

The impact of those factors came to light when I was trying to convince Mamy, my field assistant and now director of our partner organization, SEPALIM, to take charge. I don’t think that he really believed that I wanted him to be in charge. It seemed he thought that I was going to set up a program and leave him stranded and in charge of it without adequate support. Even though I always implemented his ideas, he did not believe that I considered them equally important, or more important, than mine. I think that all these ideas were the result of not being respected by foreigners. I felt like I was fighting a deep-seated resentment.

Mongabay: You’ve worked on this project for more than two decades. What kept you committed to it over that span?

Catherine L. Craig: In the area where I worked many organizations had come and gone, leaving local communities in despair. I did not want to be just another organization that left Madagascar after 3-5 years having made promises, perhaps even delivered some successes, but that did not sustain a program due to lost interest, completion of research objectives, or simply depletion of funds. My team told me that they expected me to leave after 3-5 years. They were waiting for me to fail. Continuing the project for 20 years and leaving a new director who had funds to expand our work made all the difference.

In addition, all the local work in was done by our partner organization, the local nonprofit that Conservation through Poverty Alleviation, Sehatry Mpamokatra Landy Ifotony, (SEPALI Madagascar). It was staffed by Malagasy who lived in the communities full-time, renting village houses for the team to stay in, using the local businesses, public water taxis and land transport. We did not have project vehicles or boats. In essence, we spent all our funds locally. I think that those factors demonstrated our commitment to the communities.

Mongabay: How did your role change over time, from leading the work to stepping back and supporting others?

Catherine L. Craig: My role changed from a) learning about the area, b) selecting team members and identifying sites, c) making local decisions about directions that the program should take, d) identifying new ways to motivate the farmers, e) hiring trainers to teach artisans the skills they needed to make products (dyeing, sewing, new weaving skills). Finally, after 18 years I decided that my management was hindering program independence and success. I would continue to search for buyers and marketing SEPALIM’s products and providing opportunities for Mamy and Lalaina to travel to US markets. But the Malagasy were ready to completely take over the program in Madagascar.  CPALI’s job would focus to find funding and finding a new director/fundraiser.

Finally, given the importance of marketing, I knew that the program would not survive if Mamy and Lalaina did not speak English and travel to the US to meet buyers. Fortunately, they both had studied some English in school, and thanks to the generous gift of a television from one of our donors, they were able to learn English and are now fluent.

Mongabay: What have you learned from working with local communities that you think is often overlooked in conservation projects?

Catherine L. Craig: I learned patience; to allow farmers to participate in program planning and allow them to implement new farming practices on their own timeline. It was also important to introduce the project to village elders for approval before introducing it to the farmers and their families. Finally, establishing a farm demonstration site where farmers could see and understand what their silk farms might look like and we also established a workshop to train the farmer’s wives to make saleable products. The workshop program and the farming program tied together cocoon production and product development.

Mongabay: Looking back, what aspects of the project are you most satisfied with?

Catherine L. Craig: I am proud I left the project financially secure and governed by the Malagasy. I am also proud that the team has chosen to continue to pursue the workshop projects, caterpillar farming, agroforestry and biochar production for sustainable energy and that the artisans have begun to organize and develop new products, dyes and weaving skills.

Mongabay: What were some of the more difficult periods, and how did the project navigate them?

Catherine L. Craig: The most difficult times during the project occurred when the price of vanilla sky rocketed. That caused our farmers to drop silk production and turn to producing vanilla. As a result, Mamy decided to find new areas where vanilla could not be produced (largely due to low humidity) but where new species of silk moths produced cocoons. This clearly demonstrated the value of working in an area of high biodiversity as well as identifying a natural product produced by diverse species. When the vanilla markets subsequently bottomed out, not all farmers returned to farming silk but for those who did, our cocoon market provided a lifeline.

Mongabay: What gives you hope when you think about the future of conservation and community-based approaches?

Catherine L. Craig: After seeing how our farmers (led by Mamy) and artisans (led by Lalaina) responded to international market fluctuations that they had no control over, I can see that they have come to value local biodiversity and its sustainable use as a source for new products. I know that they are searching for new endemic resources that can be expanded for local use such as plant fibers for weaving, natural dyes, and foods. These are not products that are farmed industrially but collected using traditional methods. The team gives me hope that more sustainably farmed products will continue to be identified, for example plants for natural dyes, foods and beverages. Also encouraging is the fact that all of these are produced in the border forests that surround the Makira.

I’m also encouraged by other projects that have economic approaches and involve local communities.  In the early 70’s, Janzen and Hallwachs initiated a project that became known as the Guanacaste Conservation Area project. They developed a program to train local people as parataxonomists who identify, conserve and catalogue hundreds of species of Lepidoptera and their host plants. The project provides income to local people, education opportunities and supports local biodiversity.

Kris and Doug Thompkins developed a larger-scale approach to conservation, rewilding. Rewilding is re-creating a fully functional ecosystems by introducing wildlife that to sites where it was previously driven to extinction. By assisting local communities in maintaining the borders of restored ecosystems they insure the local knowledge drives land care.

In North America and first income countries, Natural Capital Projects have been successful. These demand a financial infra-structure, communication and transport that are not available in lower income countries like Madagascar but that are successful in high income countries.

Mongabay: For people entering this field today, what advice would you offer based on your experience?

Catherine L. Craig: There are many different approaches to conservation and they all depend on the situation and project scale. For my work I was not affiliated with a large organization and did not have access to the amazing technologies, like drones for surveying, that are now available. Future conservationists should consider what kind of conservation approach is most effective for the area they will be working in and what they want to accomplish. I was lucky to have two small grants from the National Geographic Society and the Rufford Foundation, and most importantly, long term, private donors. I chose to work with local communities where I thought my limited funds might have an impact and they did. The first step was to convince villagers of the value of the resources that surrounded them and that they had not previously considered. I was surprised to learn how thoughtful, encouraging and supportive the elders were and I think that made a big difference to other villagers. People entering a new area should make sure that they consult with village elders or community leaders. If the project is not approved by village elders, the team will need to outline a new project or work with a different community.

If others were to take my approach, i.e. establish enterprise based approach, they need to be familiar with the resources in the area, the kinds of products that can be made from them and have some idea of what successful markets they will target. Does the resource have economic value? Can it be farmed or scaled while preserving or, better, enhancing the landscape? Can you partner with others to transform the resource into a marketable product? The most important factor of all is choosing a product that is accessible and that community members are interested in.

Mongabay: Now that you’ve stepped back from day-to-day leadership, how do you see your role, and what do you hope the project becomes in the years ahead.

Catherine L. Craig: Many new, locally based nonprofit, conservation programs have been established in Madagascar in the past 20 years. I hope that the SEPALIM program and approach will continue to grow, to influence new programs, to work in new areas, test new products, and succeed in developing new sustainable enterprises that support Madagascar’s rich biodiversity and local communities. Our current new director, Rachel Kramer, is working with Mamy Ratsimbazafy and Lalaina Raharindimby doing just that. I would be happy to serve as a senior advisor assisting others who are interested in developing sustainable enterprise programs specific to new habitats.

Cite this article

Rhett Ayers Butler (2026). How silk caterpillars became a tool for conservation in Madagascar. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320878

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