Dispatches From The Field

26 May 2003 -- Julia Jones

My name is Julia Jones, I’m in Tana to catch a plane back to Britain and write up the work I have been doing here in Madagascar over the last couple of years. I ran into Luke and he asked me to write one of these dispatches about my project. My partner (Neal Hockley) and I live in a small village near Ranomafana National Park in the eastern rainforests. We both work on issues related to exploitation of forest products; their importance to local economies and the sustainability of the harvests. I am working on a PhD thesis with the Conservation Biology Group at the University of Cambridge, my work focuses on harvesting of Malagasy crayfish. These tasty crustaceans are very important to the economy of the area where we live with many people depending on the harvest for their livelihood. They go into the forest daily, turning rocks and fishing with worms tied to a stick and return with a basket full to sell on the road, either raw or ready cooked as a fast food snack, to passers by. There have been suggestions that with increased markets as road traffic increases, the harvest may have become too much for the wild populations. The aim of my work has therefore been to look at how sustainable this harvest is and, if necessary, investigate opportunities for reducing overharvesting such as through aquaculture and wild management recommendations.

Its been really fascinating work which has lead me far from what I thought my academic interests were. I trained as a biologist and I was expecting my work to focus very much on the biology and population dynamics. I soon realized however that since this is a resource management issue the people side of things is vital. I have been really lucky as the villages where we work have been extremely supportive of our work and keen to participate. Almost all the team are themselves crayfish harvesters so have a real knowledge of what we are researching. As well as the biological field work we have been carrying out daily interviews with harvesters building up a map of how far people are going in the forest to harvest and why. This can then inform our biological work as we then know which sites have been exposed to what level of harvesting.

I fly to the UK tomorrow. It was rather emotional leaving Bevoahazo, the village that has been our home for the last 2 years. Neal is still there and I plan to come back as soon as my thesis is written but a very happy and endlessly interesting chapter of my life has drawn to a close. However, it is time to go and properly analyze and write up the work, then come back and make sure the results are made available as widely as possible so they can, hopefully, be of use to the management of crayfish here in Madagascar.