Endangered Species on the Menu: Urban Demand for Wild Meat in Madagascar

Hunting is among the greatest threats to nonhuman primates worldwide. Madagascar is a primate mega-diversity country, and lemurs are one of the most threatened groups of vertebrates globally, yet there persists a lack of information on the urban demand for, and trade of, lemurs across Madagascar’s city centers.

Thanks, in part, to the Van Tienhoven Foundation, we are filling the national-level knowledge gap by completing the first study on the scale and variation in geography, species, restaurant and consumer attributes, and costs of wild meat sales in restaurants across more than 15 different cities in all provinces of Madagascar. This project will contribute to the assessment of the extinction risk of over 100 lemur species and to the design and targeting of an action plan to address the urban meat trade in Madagascar.