Masoala

Masoala National Park was created in 1997 in north-eastern Madagascar and protects some 2,300 km², which makes it the largest national park in the country. It occupies the heart of the peninsula of the same name and also includes three adjoining marine parks, so that the forest reaches literally to the shore and continues underwater in coral reefs.

It preserves lowland rainforest, the most threatened and the richest forest type in Madagascar, with rainfall exceeding six thousand millimetres a year in some sectors. The island completed its separation from the other landmasses more than sixty million years ago, and its flora and fauna evolved in isolation: hence Masoala holds an extremely high proportion of endemic species.

Its emblematic fauna includes the red ruffed lemur, found only on this peninsula, the aye-aye, the nocturnal primate with an elongated finger that taps wood to locate grubs, and ten further lemur species. The birds include the helmet vanga, endemic to the north-east, and in the park's waters there are turtles, dugongs and humpback whales that calve in Antongil Bay. Masoala was, along with Marojejy, the epicentre of the illegal rosewood and ebony logging crisis that broke out during the political instability of 2009: it is reckoned that more than sixty thousand precious hardwood trees were felled, and a further five hundred thousand to make their transport possible.