Lords and Lemurs: Mad Scientists, Kings with Spears, and the Survival of Diversity in Madagascar

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Product Description Jolly, Alison From Publishers Weekly This quirky and engaging history cum memoir explores the issue of sustainable development in a microcosm called Berenty, a private nature preserve in southern Madagascar surrounded by plantations and many desperately poor people. Primatologist Jolly (Lucy’s Legacy) has spent much of her life studying the lemur population of Berenty, but she is also a keen observer of the life and culture of the Tandroy people who live nearby. The respectful coexistence of monkeys and men is due, she feels, to the leadership of the de Heaulme family, a French colonial dynasty who preserved a patch of pristine forest when they carved out their plantations. Through their story, Jolly surveys the history of Madagascar from the 17th-century arrival of the French through the harsh colonial regime, the 1947 War of Independence and the famines and political upheavals of recent decades. The de Heaulmes emerge as exemplary seigneurs, exercising a protective stewardship over land and people while fostering long-term economic development that doesn’t obliterate the region’s cultural or ecological legacy. Indeed, as they reorient the family business from commercial agriculture to 21st-century ecotourism, they represent to Jolly a kind of feudal third way between what she sees as the stagnation and corruption of socialism and the rapaciousness of global capitalism. Jolly can seem a tad starry-eyed about the de Heaulmes, who are personal friends, and doesn’t explain how their brand of benevolent paternalism could be institutionalized. But her vivid storytelling and perceptive insights into the natural and social worlds of Berenty make the tension between economic growth and environmental preservation come alive in human terms. Photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Scientific American Jolly, a pioneer in the study of primate behavior, first went to Madagascar to observe lemurs 40 years ago. Her research site was at Berenty, a private wildlife refuge that was part of the plantation of an aristocratic French family. The de Heaulmes had come to Berenty in 1928. As they developed their plantation over the years, they also set aside a large area of it for lemurs and other animals and helped the native Tandroy tribe preserve their traditions. At the beginning of the 21st century, Berenty and its lemurs still flourish because the de Heaulme family are still there--and vice versa. "Forest and family saved each other," Jolly says. The plantation no longer produces sisal commercially; together with the preserved forest and its lemurs, it has become a destination for eco-tourists. Woven around the life of the de Heaulme family is the entire history of Madagascar--its geology, its animals and its colonization by humans, beginning with Indonesians and Africans in around A.D. 500. It is an unexpectedly enthralling story, told with great flair. Editors of Scientific American From Booklist Madagascar, one of the world's poorest countries, became a political pawn during World War II, and since then has fought famine, a battle for independence, and, most recently, a civil war over a disputed presidential election. At the island's extreme southern end is Berenty, a private wildlife refuge founded by French aristocrats and home to an uncommon and inspiring coexistence of Western culture, nature, and native traditions. Jolly first came to Berenty as a 25-year-old "with a brand-new Ph.D and a Sputnik-era research grant" to study lemurs, and upon her arrival met the site's owner, Jean de Heaulme, a sisal farmer. Unlike other colonialists, the de Heaulmes recognized the importance of their surrounding environment and its history, and they forged a strong bond with the Tandroy, local tribespeople who still lived in traditional villages surrounded by thorn walls. The de Heaulmes, in fact, supported the move for independence from the French, and whe