Madagascar’s biodiversity is collapsing, but a small team’s fight to save one critically endangered gecko mirrors the wider struggle to protect the island’s remaining forests and the communities tied to them. Researcher Avery Tilley discovers how this small-scale project represents a much larger question: How can conservation succeed in one of the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots?
The first rays filter through tangled foliage in the southeastern village of Sainte Luce, Madagascar, a place relatively under-visited by outsiders. The air smells of wet earth and carries the distant rhythm of an axe. On a serrated screw-pine leaf, a gecko no longer than my finger perches, glowing green with a crimson forked mark down its back. I hold my breath before lifting my camera; even a small movement could send it vanishing. Phelsuma antanosy, a species of day gecko, has been known to science for barely three decades.
Today, most of its population survives in a forest small enough to cross in an afternoon. The gecko exists in less than 16 square miles (40 square kilometers) of forest, divided into a handful of fragments. One fragment—referred to here as A1 to protect its location—holds roughly 3,500 individuals, over 80 percent of the population. But A1 lies inside the footprint of a planned ilmenite mine operated by QIT Madagascar Minerals-Rio Tinto. Within five years, this last gecko stronghold could be gone.
In Sainte Luce, however, this story is not only about a gecko. It is about a community whose own survival is inseparable from the fate of the forest, a tale echoed in conservation efforts across the globe.
When I first arrived in Sainte Luce, the forest felt as though it was holding its breath. I had come as a wildlife health researcher and National Geographic Young Explorer, joining the conservation team monitoring Phelsuma antanosy and documenting the effort to protect the species.
Yet most travelers come to Madagascar for the icons: lemurs leaping through canyons, chameleons shifting colors along forest trails, and towering baobabs rising above the scrub. However, many of these symbols of the island are now at risk. Madagascar is one of the most biologically unique places on Earth: roughly 90 percent of its wildlife, including all species of lemurs, occurs nowhere else. But that uniqueness also makes it fragile. Recent research found that 98 percent of assessed lemur species are threatened with extinction, making them the most endangered group of mammals on the planet. The pressures driving those declines are the same ones threatening the small green gecko I came to study.
Sainte Luce sits within one of Madagascar’s rarest habitats: Littoral forest, a sandy-soiled rainforest that once formed a green ribbon along the island’s eastern shore. Today, roughly 90 percent of this forest has been cleared. Though it covers less than one percent of Madagascar’s land area, nearly 13 percent of the island’s native flora is found here.
“The driving factor for the decline for Phelsuma antanosy is the same as the factor that is for the rest of the wildlife in Madagascar: Habitat destruction.”
- Leo Jhaveri, former Research Coordinator, SEED Madagascar
Mosa Eugene, President of the local forest management committee, puts it plainly: “They [the people of Sainte Luce] are really happy because the Phelsuma [antanosy] makes Sainte Luce important… if mining starts unexpectedly, the Phelsuma would be destroyed, and the next generation wouldn’t know them. They wouldn’t know what made Sainte Luce special.”
For the people of Sainte Luce, these forests are more than a backdrop; they are a lifeline. Communities depend on them for firewood, building materials, and medicinal plants, while the trees help anchor the sandy soils that protect the village from erosion and seasonal cyclones. Historically, Sainte Luce relied on fishing and small-scale agriculture, but a growing population, industrial fishing from overseas vessels, and what the UN describes as the world’s first climate-change-linked famine, have all contributed to deforestation.
What has happened here is not unique. Madagascar has lost roughly 44 percent of its total natural forest since the 1950s, and deforestation accelerated again after 2005, fragmenting what remains into shrinking ecological zones.
SEED Madagascar, a nonprofit with decades of work in the region, has documented these pressures while also building partnerships in conservation, health, and livelihoods. Leo Jhaveri, former Conservation Research Coordinator for SEED Madagascar, explains: “The driving factor for the decline for Phelsuma antanosy is the same as the factor that is for the rest of the wildlife in Madagascar: Habitat destruction. The need for charcoal, firewood, and construction has meant that the forests have been slowly destroyed.”
Among the disappearing trees is Pandanus longistylus, the screw pine the gecko relies on for basking, hunting, and egg-laying. Local residents have long recognized that these serrated leaves are where the geckos most often appear. Our surveys confirmed what many already knew: nearly 87 percent of gecko sightings occur on this single plant species. Without it, the gecko cannot survive.
This is the paradox: Saving the gecko requires protecting habitat, but protecting habitat cannot come at the expense of the people who depend on it. This tension defines conservation not only here, but across biodiversity hotspots around the world.
In Namibia, communal conservancies helped wildlife rebound by tying conservation to community benefit and locally controlled tourism revenue; in Nepal, forest cover surged after community forestry expanded and local users gained authority to manage forests.
This is also where travel can either help or harm. Visitor spending only makes a difference when it reaches local communities through mechanisms such as community guiding associations, revenue-sharing protected areas, and conservation programs that employ local staff and reduce pressure on forests. Madagascar is still working to expand these models, but examples are emerging across the island.
These include community-run sites like Anja Community Reserve, where tourism supports both lemur conservation and local development; locally founded organizations such as Association Mitsinjo, which manages forest restoration and conservation programs near Andasibe; and research hubs like Centre ValBio, where visiting scientists and students contribute directly to long-term conservation research and community projects. And for travelers looking for a true once-in-a-lifetime experience, SEED Madagascar hosts volunteers in Sainte Luce for multiple weeks, where you can assist with hands-on conservation work.
For travelers, these experiences offer more than wildlife sightings. They provide a rare chance to see how conservation actually works on the ground, where local guides, researchers, and community leaders are shaping solutions that protect forests while sustaining the livelihoods tied to them.
Recognizing that the gecko’s survival is inseparable from that of the forest and community, SEED Madagascar launched Project Phelsuma in 2024 with support from the National Geographic Society.
The initiative is built on a bold plan. “SEED Madagascar will translocate the Phelsuma antanosy into the protected area and then we collaborate with the community as well—because we saw a lot of them in A1, but A1 is a community resource zone, with lots of disturbance,” says Hoby Tsimijaly, Program Lead for SEED’s Conservation Research Department. “That’s why SEED Madagascar and the community in Sainte Luce decided to translocate the Phelsuma antanosy into the protected area.”
Here [Saint Luce], the gecko has become more than a species on the brink. It is a symbol of resilience, both ecological and cultural.
In practice, the decision required months of groundwork. Little is formally known about the gecko’s ecology, so the team combined scientific monitoring with local knowledge to guide next steps. Community members who spend their lives moving through these forest fragments often notice patterns researchers might miss: Where screw pines grow best, which patches of forest stay cooler and wetter, and where geckos are most often seen basking in the morning sun. Their observations helped guide habitat restoration and informed where new Pandanus plantings would be most likely to succeed.
More than 100 screw pines have since been transplanted into a protected fragment to strengthen both critical habitat and relationships with the local community. As Chef Damy Pierson, Sainte Luce’s elected leader, put it, “We protect it [Phelsuma antanosy] together and plant together. You see, we planted Pandanus in the protected forest. I believe they’ll grow big.”
This habitat restoration and protection not only benefits the geckos but also strengthens the forest itself. Screw pines stabilize sandy soils, provide shelter for insects and reptiles, and help rebuild the fragile littoral ecosystem that many species, such as the collared brown lemur and warty chameleon, depend on.
In the beginning of 2025, a large area of forest in the south was destroyed by fire. It will definitely have affected the last main stronghold of this species in the world, ”explains Jhaveri. Fire has become common in Madagascar, with an average of over 350,000 fires annually between 2012 and 2019. These fires, driven by agricultural clearing and increasingly dry conditions, compound habitat loss already accelerated by human drivers and warming trends.
Yet despite these setbacks, the project has moved forward. In 2025, a handful of geckos were carefully translocated into newly planted screw pine groves within the protected forest. I watched as a bamboo transport tube opened and saw one gecko hesitate at the threshold before slipping into the leaves and disappearing. Post-translocation monitoring efforts are ongoing, though the long-term outcome remains uncertain. The hope is that this trial will inform and guide future conservation efforts.
The threats facing Phelsuma antanosy are echoed across Madagascar and the globe: Mining, deforestation, wildfire, and climate-driven impacts. And yet, in Sainte Luce, conservation is unfolding not against the community, but alongside it.
Here, the gecko has become more than a species on the brink. It is a symbol of resilience, both ecological and cultural. From classroom murals to locally stitched handicrafts, Phelsuma antanosy now threads through the identity of Sainte Luce.
So how can conservation succeed in one of the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots? After weeks walking these forest fragments with the research team, the answer feels increasingly clear. It will not succeed through isolation, enforcement, or translocation alone. Moving geckos may buy time, but without local partnership and reduced pressure on surrounding forests, even a protected habitat will fail.
Most mornings begin before the heat rises and as the first lemur calls echo through the canopy. We walk the forest fragments slowly, scanning the serrated leaves of screw-pines where Phelsuma antanosy prefers to perch in the morning sun. Sometimes the geckos reveal themselves instantly, a flash of green and orange against the leaves. Other times we search for hours. And for me, that’s the point of being here: to witness how conservation becomes real only when it is built with the people who live inside its consequences.
For now, in the shifting light of the Sainte Luce forest, the green flash of a gecko remains. Sometimes I catch that movement and feel a surge of relief; other times I wonder how long that flash will endure. Its future will depend not only on science, but on whether conservation can also sustain the people who share its fragile forest home.
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Avery Tilley is a National Geographic Young Explorer and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, focused on conservation medicine, wildlife disease, and Indigenous stewardship. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he is the Chair of the Native Peoples Wildlife Management Working Group, and uses film, writing, and public speaking to elevate Indigenous voices in conservation.
