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A troop of Verreaux’s sifakas are a lively bunch. When these lanky, white-and-brown primates aren’t leaping through the canopy of Madagascar’s southern spiny forests, they’re bounding across the ground on their hind legs as if riding a pogo stick. The sifakas are aptly nicknamed the “dancing lemurs”.
But earlier this spring, wildlife managers at the Berenty Reserve were horrified to find some of these usually spry animals dragging themselves across the forest floor with their hands. Their hindquarters had suddenly become paralyzed. Over the next 24 hours, the mysterious ailment crept up the lemurs’ bodies until it caused their lungs to seize, leading to their death. Many more of the affected animals were then found dead in the forest. All told, at least 31 Verreaux’s sifakas met this fate over the course of April, making it one of the largest lemur die-offs in recent memory.
Any time wild animals die in large numbers under uncertain circumstances, it raises a red flag for wildlife managers, but the fact that Verreaux’s sifakas are rare—and getting rarer—makes conservationists extra nervous. At a recent meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital city, scientists had up-listed all nine species of sifaka to critically endangered. Like many other types of lemurs, sifakas suffer mainly from loss of habitat, due to widespread deforestation on Madagascar, as well as hunting. The last thing they need is a plague to boot.
No one can say for sure how many Verreaux’s sifakas are left in the wild, says Russell Mittermeier, the chief conservation officer for Global Wildlife Conservation and chair of the IUCN’s and Species Survival Commission’s primate specialist group. But in the Berenty Reserve, where the outbreak unfolded, there are thought to be around 200 of them. This means that almost 20 percent of the entire Verreaux’s sifaka population in one of the species’ last strongholds may have died in April.
Courtesy of nrdc.org
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