How one woman’s leadership transformed Madagascar’s Menabe-Antimena from ecological crisis to conservation breakthrough
Dr. Soary Randrianjafizanaka had a problem: the fires kept coming.
As Director of the Menabe-Antimena Protected Area in western Madagascar, she watched year after year as flames tore through one of the planet’s most irreplaceable forests—home to the world’s smallest primate, Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur, and dry forests found nowhere else on Earth. Her team responded quickly, paying local community members to help extinguish the blazes. It seemed like the right thing to do.
But the fires kept getting worse.
Then Soary and her team at Fanamby Association—our partner organization managing the protected area—discovered a troubling pattern: some of the same people collecting payments to fight fires were the ones setting them. The well-intentioned incentive had backfired spectacularly.
So she made a controversial call: stop paying people to put out fires.
“It was not an easy decision,” Soary reflects. “But we had to be honest about what was working and what wasn’t. The forest couldn’t afford for us to keep doing the same thing.”
The Turnaround
What happened next stunned even the most optimistic conservationists.
In 2025, Menabe-Antimena achieved a record drop in fire incidents—55-65% fewer fires than in 2024, with no severe fire peaks for the first time in years. The 516,000-acre protected area, which had been losing forest at catastrophic rates (over 5% annually in the worst years), is now stabilizing. In 2024, forest loss dropped to just 1,621 acres—a 58% reduction from the previous year.
Soary’s team redirected resources into fire prevention: building firebreaks, training rapid-response brigades, deploying satellite detection systems, and working with local villages to understand why fires were being set in the first place. Communities that once saw the protected area as an obstacle now play an active role in reporting illegal activities.
“The community once saw this forest as merely an impediment to destroy for agriculture to take over,” Soary says. “Now they see that the forest protects their own precious needs—such as providing water year round for their rice fields and needs, for their future.”
Recognition and Reality
In 2025, Soary’s leadership earned her the International Ranger Award at the IUCN World Conservation Congress—a recognition of her courage, her commitment to community rights, and her determination to defend one of Madagascar’s most threatened ecosystems under genuinely dangerous conditions.
But Soary is quick to temper any celebration. “This is fragile,” she insists. “One bad year, one funding gap, and we could lose everything we’ve gained.”
Menabe-Antimena’s recovery is real but reversible. Continued community engagement, stronger rapid-response capacity, and sustained funding are necessities.
What It Proves
Through our partnership with Fanamby and leaders like Soary, we’re seeing what works in conservation: local leadership that can adapt strategies honestly, community investment that creates genuine partnership, and the courage to admit when well-intentioned approaches aren’t working.
For the first time in years, Menabe-Antimena has a fighting chance. For donors and partners, this year proves that investing in local leaders and trusting their judgment delivers results. The world’s smallest primate—and the forest it calls home—is counting on it.
Dr. Soary Randrianjafizanaka in the center wearing yellow, surrounded by Conservation Brigade members.