Andasibe – Voices of the Forest
Rain filters through the emerald canopy, dripping from leaf to leaf before vanishing into the dark soil. In Andasibe’s primary forest, the air is saturated with the scent of wet earth, orchids, and moss. Mist clings to the trunks, blurring the line between the living and the ancient. Then, from somewhere deep in the shadows, a sound rises — low, haunting, impossibly pure. It is the call of the indri (Indri indri), the largest of Madagascar’s lemurs, carrying through the forest like a hymn from another time. For a moment, everything holds still.
Madagascar is home to around 112 species and subspecies of lemurs, all found nowhere else on Earth. Unlike monkeys — their distant evolutionary cousins — lemurs are strepsirrhines: they have a more developed sense of smell, a wet nose, and, in many species, eyes adapted to low light. Isolated here for millions of years, they evolved into a dazzling variety of forms, from the bamboo lemurs that cling to slender stalks, to the diademed sifakas that leap more than ten meters between trees.
In Andasibe, the indri shares its forest with the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus), the smaller eastern grey bamboo lemur (Hapalemur griseus), and the spectacular diademed sifaka (Propithecus diadema), whose silky white-and-gold fur flashes through the canopy. Hidden among the trunks are masters of camouflage: the leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus), flat-bodied with frilled edges that erase its shadow, and the male panther chameleon (Furcifer pardalis), ablaze in reds, greens, and blues that shift with mood and light.
Yet even this sanctuary is shrinking. Rice paddies and cassava fields push ever closer to the forest edge. Fresh stumps mark recent logging, and narrow red-dirt trails cut deeper into the trees. In the past fifty years, Madagascar has lost nearly 40% of its forest cover, and Andasibe now feels like an island of biodiversity adrift in a sea of human pressure. Each morning, when the indri calls, it does so in a forest slightly smaller than the day before.
The Pangalanes – Life on the Water
Leaving the highland forest behind, the road winds east until the hills open into a patchwork of calm waters, reed-fringed lagoons, and narrow channels. This is the Pangalanes Canal, a 600-kilometer artery linking lakes and rivers along Madagascar’s east coast. Here, life is measured in paddle strokes. At dawn, fishermen set out in narrow wooden pirogues, their movements smooth and unhurried. The boats return heavy with shrimp, silver-scaled fish, or green bananas. Stacked high on some decks are bamboo shrimp traps — woven cylinders that sink into the canal overnight and are hauled up at first light, emptied by quick, practiced hands. Farther along, floating nets mark family fishing grounds, their lines stretching across the water like strands of a web. On the banks, daily life revolves around the canal. Children bathe near moored pirogues. Women wash clothes, rhythmically slapping them against wooden planks. Men carve new paddles from freshly cut logs. Trade happens boat-to-boat — a basket of shrimp swapped for fruit, a greeting exchanged midstream. The canal feeds both bodies and livelihoods, but every fish caught, every shrimp lifted from the traps is also one less piece of the ecosystem’s fragile puzzle. 
The Night Wanderer
Night falls quickly here. Cooking fires flicker on the banks, and the canal turns to black glass under the moonless sky. Our pirogue moves almost silently, the paddle’s dip the only sound. At the bow, our guide, Roméo, sweeps a flashlight over the low branches. Two orange points flare in the beam — unmoving, unblinking. The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis). It moves forward slowly, its dark fur streaked with silver, its large ears swiveling like satellite dishes. Its most unusual feature is the elongated middle finger — a finely tuned tool. The aye-aye taps the bark, listening for the hollow resonance of insect larvae hidden within. When it detects a target, it gnaws a small hole with rodent-like incisors and slips in its spidery finger to hook its prey. Feared in some villages as a harbinger of misfortune, the aye-aye is, in fact, a vital forest engineer, recycling dead wood and controlling wood-boring insects. To see one here, unhurried and unafraid, is to witness both resilience and fragility in a single moment. Then, with a silent leap, it melts back into the dark. 
An Uneasy Balance
Along the Pangalanes, human life depends on the same resources that sustain its wildlife. The shrimp and fish caught here feed entire families and supply the restaurants catering to travelers drawn by Madagascar’s rare species. This economy is essential — but it rests on daily extraction that offers little time for the ecosystem to recover. Fine Art Wildlife What We Lost — CollectionA curated series of wildlife fine art prints — memory, loss and resilience. Museum-grade papers, archival inks, limited editions. Shop the collection
The contradiction is stark. At night, guides lead trips to glimpse the aye-aye, an animal protected by law and celebrated for its rarity. By day, in the same waters, traps and nets blanket the canal to meet the rising demand from tourism and local markets.
On land, the pressure is just as intense. Trees felled in surrounding forests are used to build homes for new arrivals seeking work near hotels. What begins as a temporary settlement often becomes permanent, eating further into the forest edge. Every tree taken for a wall or roof is one less shelter for lemurs, pushing species like the indri and sifaka into smaller, more fragmented habitats.
The Pangalanes distills Madagascar’s central paradox: a rare animal revered and protected, a human community reliant on natural abundance, and an environment quietly diminishing. The survival of this fragile Eden depends on finding a delicate balance between protection and subsistence, between immediate need and long-term vision. Until that balance is found, each indri’s call and each fleeting glimpse of an aye-aye remain both a miracle — and a warning.
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Serge Melesan
Underwater & Fine Art Ocean Photographer Specialist in Fine Art Ocean Photography. Published in Oceanographic Magazine & Earth.org. National Geographic Traveller – Portfolio Winner (2023). Archives
Janvier 2026
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