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THERE ARE AT LEAST 8 MILLION

unique species of life on theplanet, if not far more, and youcould be forgiven for believingthat all of them can be found

in Andasibe. Walking through this rainforest in Madagascar is like stepping intothe library of life. Sunlight seeps throughthe silky fringes of the Ravenea louvelii, anendangered palm found, like so much elseon this African island, nowhere else. Leaf-tailed geckos cling to the trees, cloaked ingreen. A fat Parson's chameleon lies lazilyon abranch, beady eyes scanning for dinner.But the animal Imost hoped to find, I don'tsee at first; I hear it, though-a sustainedgroan that electrifies the forest quiet. MyMalagasy guide, Marie Razafindrasolo,finds the source of the sound perched ona branch. It is the black-and-white indri,largest of the lemurs-a type of small

An Island ApartMadagascar split from India 80 millionto IDa million years ago. All thattime in virtual isolation meant thatwildlife on the island followed its ownevolutionary path. This helped produceunique species like thefossa, a catlikecarnivore with the agility of a squirreland the attitude of a wolverine.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: INGO ARNDT-MINDEN; PETE OXFORD-MINDEN; DANTE FEN OLIO-PHOTO RESEARCHERS; ZSSD-MINDEN: DANIEL HEUCLIN-PHOTO RESEARCHERS;

S. JANSSEN-MINDEN; FRANS LANTING; PIOTR NASKRECKI; PETE OXFORD-MINDEN; CENTER: ALBERT LLEAL-MINDEN

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Dead forests Madagascar has.zost more than 80% of itsforests, chiefly to the slash-and-burnstyle of ricefarming know as tavy, which exhausts the soil as it destroys habitats

primate found only in Madagascar. Thecry is known as a spacing call, awarning toother indris to keep their distance, to pre-vent competition for food. But there's notmuch risk of interlopers. The species-likemany other lemurs, like many other ani-mals in Madagascar, like somuch oflife onEarth-is endangered and dwindling fast.

Madagascar-which separated fromIndia 80 million to 100 million years agobefore eventually settling off the south-eastern coast of Africa:-is in many waysan Earth apart. All that time in geographicisolation made Madagascar a Darwinianplayground, its animals and plants evolv-ing into forms utterly original. They in-clude species as strange-looking as thepygmy mouse lemur-a chirping, palm-size mammal that may be the smallestprimate on the planet-and as hauntingas the carnivorous fossa, a catlike animalabout 30 in. long. Some 90% of the island'splants and about 70% of its animals are en-demic, meaning that they are found onlyin Madagascar. But what makes life on theisland unique also makes it uniquely vul-nerable. "If we lose these animals on Mad-agascar, they're gone forever," says RussellMittermeier, president of the wildlifegroup Conservation International (CI).

That loss seems likelier than ever be-cause the animals are under threat as neverbefore. Once lushly forested, Madagascarhas seen more than 80% of its original veg-etation cut down or burned since humansarrived at least 1,500 years ago, fragment-ing habitats and leaving animals effective-ly homeless. Unchecked hunting wipedout a number of large species, and today

mining, logging and energy explorationthreaten those that remain. "You have anarea the size of New Jersey in Madagascarthat is still under forest, and all this in-credible diversity is crammed into it," saysMittermeier, an American who has beentraveling to the country for more than 25

years. "We're very concerned."Madagascar is a conservation hot

spot-a term for a region that is very bio-diverse and particularly threatened-andwhile that makes the island special, it ishardly alone. Conservationists estimatethat extinctions worldwide are occurringat a pace that is up to 1,000 times as great ashistory'S background rate before humanbeings began proliferating. Worse, thatdie-off could be accelerating.

Price of ExtinctionTHERE HAVE BEEN FIVE EXTINCTION WAVES

in the planet's history-including thePermian extinction 250 million years ago,

A 2004 studyestimated thatglobal warmingcould drive amillion speciesto extinctionby midcentury

when an estimated 70% of all terrestrialanimals and 96% of all marine creaturesvanished, and, most recently, the Creta-ceous event 65 million years ago, whichended the reign of the dinosaurs. Thoughscientists have directly assessed the vi-ability of fewer than 3% of the world'sdescribed species, the sample polling ofanimal populations so far suggests that wemay have entered what will be the planet'ssixth great extinction wave. And this timethe cause isn't an errant asteroid or mega-volcanoes. It's us.

Through our growing numbers, ourthirst for natural resources and, most ofall, climate change-which, by one reck-oning, could help carry off 20% to 30%of all species before the end of the cen-tury-we're shaping an Earth that willbe biologically impoverished. A 2008 as-sessment by the International Union forConservation of Nature found that nearlyI in 4mammals worldwide was at risk forextinction, including endangered specieslike the famous Tasmanian devil. Over-fishing and acidification of the oceans arethreatening marine species as diverse asthe bluefin tuna and reef-forming corals."Just about everything is going down,"says Simon Stuart, head of the IUCN'sspecies-survival commission. "Andwhen Ithink about the impact of climate change,it really scares me."

Scary for conservationists, yes, but thequestion arises, Why should it matter tothe rest of us? After all, nearly all the spe-cies that were ever alive in the past aregone today. Evolution demands extinc-tion. When we're using the term extinc-tion to talk about the fate of the U.S. autoindustry, does it really mat.ter if we losespecies like the Holdridge's toad, the Yang-tze River dolphin and the golden toad, allof which have effectively disappeared inrecent years? What does the loss of a fewspecies among millions matter?

For one thing, we're animals too, de-pendent on this planet like every otherform of life. The more species living inan ecosystem, the healthier and moreproductive it is, which matters for us-arecent study by the World Wildlife Fund(WWF) estimates the economic value of

Desert of '-ifeThe spiny desert ofMadagascar'ssouth is brutally hot, but it's home toa unique population of animals. About

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The upside-down tree The Dr. Seussian baobab is a symbol ofMadagascar, one the government hopes to use to attract ecotounsts

the Amazon rain forest's eco-system services to be up to $rooper hectare (about 2'/2 acres).When we pollute and deforestand make a mess of the ecologi-cal web, we're taking out mort-gages on the Earth that we can'tpay back-and those loans willcome due. Then there are theundiscovered organisms andanimals that could serve as thebasis of needed medicines-asthe original ingredients of as-pirin were derived from theherb meadowsweet-unlesswe unwittingly destroy themfirst. "We have plenty of sto-ries about how the loss of bio-diversity creates problems forpeople," says Carter Roberts,WWF's president.

Forests razed can grow back,polluted air and water can becleaned-but extinction isforever. And we're not talkingabout losing just a few species.In fact, conservationists qui-etly acknowledge that we'veentered an age of triage, whenwe might have to decide whichspecies can truly be saved. Theworst-case scenarios of habitatloss and climate change-andthat's the pathway we seem tobe on-show the planet losinghundreds of thousands to mil-lions of species, many ofwhich we haven'teven discovered yet. The result could bea virtual genocide of much of the animalworld and an irreversible impoverishmentof our planet. Humans would survive, butwe would have doomed ourselves to whatnaturalist E.O.Wilson calls the EremozoicEra-the Age of Loneliness.

So if you care about tigers and tama-rins, rhinos and orangutans, if you be-lieve Earth is more than just a home for 6.7billion human beings and counting, thenyou should be scared. But fear shouldn'tleave us paralyzed. Environmentalgroups worldwide are responding withnew methods to new threats to wildlife.In hot spots like Madagascar and Brazil,conservationists are working with localson the ground, ensuring that the protec-tion of endangered species is tied to thewelfare of the people who live closest tothem. A strategy known as avoided defor-estation goes further, incentivizing envi-ronmental protection by putting a priceon the carbon locked in rain forests andallowing countries to trade credits in aninternational market, provided that thecarbon stays in the trees and is not cutor burned. And as global warming forces

animals to migrate in order to escapechanging climates, conservationists arelooking to create protected corridors thatwould give the species room to roam. It'suncertain that any of this will stop thesixth extinction wave, let alone preservethe biodiversity we still enjoy, but wehave no choice but to try. "We have awin-dow of opportunity," says Kassie Siegel,

director of the climate, energyand air program of the Centerfor Biological Diversity (CBD)."But it's slamming shut."

Birds of ParadiseAt least 32 species of birds have alreadybecome extinct in Madagascar, wherenearly 60% of avian species are endemic.The departed species include the exoticelephant bird, a ID-ft.-tall specimen thatwas the largest bird in history. The lastone likely died around the r6th century.

To Save the Species,Save the PeopleMADAGASCAR, WHICH MITTER-

meier calls the "hottest of thehot spots," is where all the newstrategies can be road-tested.In 2003, after decades whenconservation was barely on thegovernment's agenda, then-President Marc Ravalomanana .announced that the govern-ment would triple Madagas-car's protected areas over thefollowing five years. That deci-sion helped underfunded parkslike Andasibe's, which protectssome of the last untouchedforest on the island. "You can'tsave a species without savingthe habitat where it lives," saysWWF's Roberts.

Do that right, and you caneven turn a profit in the process.In Madagascar, half the revenuesfrom national parks are meantto go to the surrounding com-munities. The reserves in turnhelp sustain an industry for localguides like Razafindrasolo. In acountry aspoor asMadagascar-where 61% of the people live on

less than $1 a day-it makes sense to givelocals an economic stake in preservingwildlife rather than destroying it. "If youdon't get the support of the people livingnear a conservation area, it's just a matterof time before you'll lose [the area]," saysSteven Sanderson, president of the WildlifeConservation Society (WCS).

Well-run ecotourism can provide sup-port for conservation, but even the bestparks might be hard pressed to competewith the potential revenues from log-ging, poaching or mining. The strategyof avoided deforestation, however, offersmuch more. Rain forests like those inMadagascar contain billions and billionsof tons of carbon; destroying the trees andreleasing the carbon not only kills localspecies but also speeds global warming.Proposals in the global climate nego-tiations would allow countries to offsetsome of their greenhouse-gas emissionsby paying rain-forest nations to preservetheir trees. It's win-win, with both theclimate and the critters getting a boost.In eastern Madagascar, CI and WCS areworking together to protect about 865,000acres in the Makira Forest with a range ofcarbon investors that include Mitsubishi

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and Pearl Jam. Closer to Andasibe, CI andits partners are hiring villagers to planttrees on eroded land, which creates corri-dors to connect fragmented habitats, mayearn carbon revenues and provides need-ed employment. "We're bringing back theshelter of the forests, and we don't haveto cut trees," says Herve Tahirimalala, aMalagasy who is paid $100 a month towork on the project.

The corridors created by Cl's Anda-sibe tree-planting program show howa small tweak can reduce the species-killing effects of climate change-butalso how longer-term fixes are needed.Fragmented habitats are problematicbecause many endangered species windup trapped in green oases surroundedby degraded land. As global warmingchanges the climate, species will try tomigrate, often right into the path of de-velopment and extinction. What good isa nature reserve-fought for, paid for andprotected-if global warming renders itunlivable? "Climate change could under-mine the conservation work ofwhole gen-erations," says Larry Schweiger, presidentof the National Wildlife Federation. "Itturns out you can't save species withoutsaving the sky."

That will mean reducing carbon emis-sions as fast as possible. In the U.S., theCBDhas made an art out of using the En-dangered Species Act, which mandatesthat the government prevent the extinc-tion of listed species, to force Washing-

,--I

Undersize HipposUnlike its African neighbors,

Madagascar was never home to largemammals such as elephants, lions andcheetahs. The one exception is the dwarfhippopotamus, which swam to the

island millions ofyears ago, before it wasprobably hunted to extinction by humans.

the heels of deadly protests. As a result,development aid to the desperately poorcountry has been halted, and conserva-tion work has been disrupted. Reportshave filtered back of armed gangs step-ping into the vacuum to illegally log thenation's few remaining forests. "They'reripping out valuable timber as quickly asthey can," says Mittermeier.

News like that can tempt even thestaunchest defenders of wildlife tosimply surrender. And why shouldn'tthey? In a world where hundreds of mil-lions of human beings still go hungryand the global recession has left all butthe wealthiest fearing for their future,it's easy to wonder why we should beconcerned about the dwindling of theplanet's biodiversity.

The answer is that we can't afford notto. The same natural qualities that sus-tain wildlife-clean water, untaintedland, unbroken forests-ultimatelysustain us as well, whether we live in agreen jungle or a concrete one. But thereis an innate value to untrammeled bio-diversity too-one that goes beyond ourown survival. When that is lost, we areirretrievably diminished. "We live on avery special planet-the only planet thatwe know has life," says Mittermeier. "Forme, conservation is ultimately a moralobligation and simply the right thing todo."That leaves us a choice. We can savelife on this special planet, or be its unwit-ting executioner. _

ton to act on global warming. The CBD'sSiegel led a successful campaign to getthe Bush Administration to list the polarbear as threatened by climate change, andshe expects more species to follow. "Polarbears are the canaries in the coal mine,"says Siegel.

Why We Can't WaitWHAT'S ESPECIALLY FRIGHTENING IS

how vulnerable even the best conserva-tion work can be to rapid changes-bothclimatic and governmental. Over thepast couple of months, Madagascar hasfallen into a political abyss, with AndryRajoelina-the former mayor of Anta-nanarivo, the capital-forcing formerPresident Ravalomanana from office on

Dance,dance,danceA Verreaux's sifaka lemurshows offin Madagascar

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