An Exceptional Strike: A Micro-history of 'People versus Park' in Madagascar

Abstract

The Special Reserve of Andasibe lies on the outskirts of a Malagasy railway town whose train station doubles as a restaurant-hotel (figure 1). The station’s teak floors and rafters, its resplendent bar and grandiose murals, conjure up visions of colonial officers waiting at their leisure for the steam locomotive. The nearby forest reserve shelters the indri lemur (the largest of Madagascar’s primates) and an orchid park. It is a fragment of a larger protected area which encompasses a montane rain forest named Mantadia. Opposite the entrance to the Special Indri Reserve stands the office building of an office of the Integrated Conservation and Development Project (ICDP) whose administrators and staff oversaw the protected area from 1992 until 1997 (figure 2). In Madagascar, ICDPs aim to reduce pressures on rain forests caused by tavy, a form of shifting, swidden horticulture long identified by scientists as the principle cause of forest erosion since the island’s colonization by humans some 2000 years ago