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Expeditions > Madagascar > General surveyors |
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Projects for General surveyors There are 3 different options for the Madagascar expeditions:
Mahamavo forests and diving at Nosy Be Lokobe forests and diving at Nosy Be Ifotaka spiny forests and lemur and chameleon hunt in the second week
Mahamavo and Nosy Be Flights to this project are best organised direct to Nosy be and then an internal flight to Mahajanga is needed. The expedition starts in Mahajanga and the groups are transferred to the main camp at Mariarano. Over this week they will spend half their time in this village camp and half in one of the satellite camps. Surveys include forest structure, pitlines, standardised searches and spotlights surveys for frogs and chameleons, small mammal trapping for tenrecs, diurnal and nocturnal lemur population studies, waterbird surveys and mist netting for bats. During this week there are a series of lectures and guided discussions on Madagascar wildlife and conservation.
At the end of the first week the group return to Mahajanga and the transfer overnight by minibus to Ankify (11 hours)a nd then boat to Nosy Be (1 hour). In this second week the group have the chance to complete a PADI Open Water dive training course or an Indian Ocean reef ecology course. Flight back are from Nosy Be.
Lokobe
forests and diving at Nosy Be
During the
first week though the teams will be accessing the Lokobe reserve
at different points around the shoreline and trekking in to
completed surveys of the distribution of the rare palm tree
species, completing species lists of butterflies, standardised
searches and pitline surveys for amphibians and reptiles,
spotlight surveys after dark for herpetofauna, bird point count
and mist net surveys and lemur population density surveys. The
same lectures and guided discussions on Madagascar wildlife will
be given during this first week as at the Mariarano camp.
For the
second week the group will be completing a dive training course,
an Indian Ocean reef ecology course or a combination of the two
on the shallow reefs in the bay in front of the Morondoka camp.
Ifotaka spiny forests and Lemur and Chameloen hunt The Ifotaka option starts at Fort Dauphin which means the group needs to get a flight to Antananarivo and then an internal flight to Fort Dauphin. From there they will be taken to Ifotaka and spend half the time in the village camp and half in one of the field satellite camps. Survey work includes vegetation surveys for carbon storage, evidence of human disturbance, invasive species and distribution of rare species, diurnal and nocturnal lemur surveys, bird point counts and reptile and amphibian timed searches, pitline and spotlight surveys. In addition there will be a series of lectures and guided discussions on Madagascar wildlife and conservation.
The second week is an overland trip back to the Antananarivo airport taking in many of the different Madagascar habitats and offering a great opportunity to see a good range of Madagascar’s endemic lemur, bird, chameleon and amphibian species
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