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I started working as a tour guide at the Duke Lemur Center a year ago, when I began my master’s degree at the
Nicholas School of the Environment. Ever since I started working there, I knew that I was going to go to Madagascar
and see the animals out in the wild. Thanks to the help of Charlie Welch, Conservation Director at DLC, and Dr. Erik
Patel, Post-Doctoral Project Director in the SAVA region, I was able to spend my summer in Marojejy National Park
in the northeast of Madagascar, within the SAVA region. While I went to Madagascar to collect data for my
master’s project, which I was successfully able to do, I also learned much about the island and animals and met
many fantastic people along the way.
I split my time in Madagascar between two research sites: the tourist region in the central-eastern part of
Marojejy National Park and a remote site in the far northwestern part of the park. At each site I had two or three
transects, which I, along with my survey team, walked twice either during the day or at night. We recorded all
sightings of lemurs, other
mammals, and any signs
of habitat disturbance.
The goal was to compare
the two sites in terms of
presence, diversity and
density of lemurs, as well
as the amount and type of
habitat
disturbance.
These sites were chosen
because the tourist region
is the predominant park
region that has visitors
year-round, leading us to
think there would be less
habitat disturbance and
thus more lemurs. The
other site was very
remote (about 20 km.
walk from the road,
where the cars drop us
off!), so we assumed the
level of habitat disturbance would be much higher and thus fewer lemurs would be sighted. This turned out to be
true, as the density of lemurs was higher in the tourist zone and the amount of habitat disturbance was lower;
however, the diversity of lemurs was actually higher in the more remote site. These results will be further analyzed
to look at the effect of disturbance on each lemur species to see if some are more resilient to disturbance than
P A G E 1 2
V O L U M E 1 , I S S U E 2
DUKE CONNECTIONS
By Jennifer Moore, Master in Environmental Management Candidate
S A V A C O N S E R V A T I O N
Jennifer, Erik and Manitra with equipment, supplies and 60+ porters to get it all to the re-
search site.
Into the Wild!