"This forest is completely isolated, an island patch in an agricultural area, and it is shrinking," said Glander. "It is not protected and probably doomed, due to cutting of the forest for subsistence."
During five days in the forest, the expedition will seek to capture three young adult females and two males, Glander said. Once captured, the animals will be temporarily housed at the Ivoloina Zoological Park in Madagascar, where they will be acclimated to captivity. In approximately six months to a year, two females and one male will be brought to the Duke Primate Center, while the other breeding pair will remain in Ivoloina.
The return of the animals will depend on construction of a new quarantine facility, which the Primate Center is seeking to build to more easily meet the federal requirement for a 30-day quarantine of any animals brought to the center. The $50,000 quarantine center, for which funds are still being sought, will include chambers with separate ventilation systems and an entry area in which people can don isolation suits. The quarantine will also prove invaluable for isolating animals coming into the center from zoos and other facilities, Glander said.
The Ivoloina Zoological Park that will be the acclimatization site for the new animals is a combination lemur breeding facility, zoo, education center and tourist attraction developed over the past decade by the husband-and-wife team of Primate Center primatologists Charles Welch and Andrea Katz.
The park exemplifies the Primate Center's three-pronged approach of captive breeding, habitat protection and education to preserve the animals and to encourage further ecotourism in certain areas, Glander said.
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Contact: Dennis Meredith
Dennis.meredith@duke.edu
919-681-8054
Duke University
5-Oct-1999