Elucidating Conservational Strategies to Rescue the Greater Bamboo Lemurs: Part 1

Understanding The Alarming Situation of the Great Bamboo Lemur

Grasping how endangered the great bamboo lemur species is essential in comprehending the conservational strategies to rescue them! Therefore, the first part of this blog entails gaining insight into their situation, while the second part involves outlining the conservation strategies.

A simple introduction to the GREAT! BAMBOO!! LEMUR!!! Would be as follows:

Typically, the great bamboo lemur weighs up to 2.5 kilograms and are as tall as 26 centimetres to 50 centimetres. Let’s take a 30-centimetre ruler and see how big a typical great bamboo lemur would be, amazingly tiny. However, their tails and backs are long.

Look at them, so small and innocent. It breaks my heart to say that the greater bamboo lemur is currently listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN in 2012 (Olson et al. 2012). Not only that, but it is recognized as one of the 50 most evolutionarily unique and globally at-risk mammals by the ZSL EDGE Programme.

Can you imagine, in 2007, there was only 60 individuals known in the wild. To put this into perspective, imagine as if you were in a lecture hall with just 60 people. Depending on the size of the lecture hall, it could either feel spacious or rather crowded. Now, let’s consider that this lecture hall is roughly 270 square meters in size (equivalent to 0.00027 square kilometers). To give you some context, the entire island of Madagascar spans about 586,884 square kilometers. This stark comparison helps us appreciate the dire situation this species is facing.

Adding to this dire situation, only 22 were known to be in captivity in seven institutions, and nearly all captive individuals outside Madagascar are descendants of just two wild-born founders.

The question is why is this happening to them? These species have a specialized diet of bamboo and a microhabitat preference. This means that these species have very restricted habitat and food ranges. Human activity of slash-and-burn agriculture as well as extensive cutting of bamboo are threatening these species - causes fragmentation and disturbance.

Fear not, as the population of the Great Bamboo Lemurs are slowly but surely increasing, with an estimation of 250 to 500. To add to that! 250 to 500 of them are found in 11 different subpopulations.

References

‘[greater bamboo lemur – Encyclopedia of Life]’, in Encyclopedia of Life, Greater bamboo lemur, viewed 9 October 2023, <https://content.eol.org/data/media/85/31/70/7.CalPhotos_0000_0000_0213_0790.jpg>.

‘Greater Bamboo Lemur – Endangered Wildlife’ 2023, Endangered Wildlife, viewed 10 October 2023, <https://www.endangeredwildlife.org/wildlife/greater-bamboo-lemur/#:~:text=Distribution>.

Olson, ER, Marsh, RA, Bovard, BN, Randrianarimanana, HLL, Ravaloharimanitra, M, Ratsimbazafy, JH & King, T 2012, ‘Arboreal camera trapping for the Critically Endangered greater bamboo lemur Prolemur simus’, Oryx, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 593–597.