Marojejy

Marojejy National Park was created in 1998 in north-eastern Madagascar, although the massif had been protected as a strict nature reserve since 1952. It protects some 555 km² around Mount Marojejy, at 2,132 metres, and its value lies in the gradient: within a few kilometres one passes from lowland rainforest to montane forest, to cloud forest draped in mosses and epiphytes and, on the summits, to high-altitude sclerophyllous scrub.

That complete and unbroken succession is rare in Madagascar, where deforestation has fragmented almost every massif, and it explains the park's concentration of endemics, with plant, amphibian and reptile species that exist only here.

Its most emblematic species is the silky sifaka, a lemur with white fur and a bare face, reckoned one of the most threatened primates on the planet, with a population numbering a few hundred individuals spread between Marojejy and a handful of neighbouring areas. The park was, along with Masoala, the main focus of the illegal rosewood and ebony logging during the political crisis of 2009, which led to the property being placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.