Lemur birth control, nesting boxes, and more rescues

Hi everyone!

I've now been back in Madagascar for a little over a week. I've spent most of that laying around sweating (jet-lagg, HEAT, fever, chest cold, diarrhea (like you wanted to know, right?)), but did also manage to get some work done... 

Here we are at the Lemur Conservation Center in Toliara. Chatting up all things lemur.

With the money from the Little Rock Zoo and the donations that many of you have made (THANK YOU), we've determined that the following are the most urgent needs of the lemurs at the Rescue Center:

1) Birth control! Its almost the ring-tailed lemur mating period, and given that we are full to the brim with lemurs (25 residents, 3 in waiting, many more to come), we need to make sure that we don't have a baby boom in the fall (though it would be cute!). Arranging lemur birth control injections, however, is not as easy as one may think. We use Depo-Provera (the same thing used by humans), but these must be administered FIVE times by an out-of-town cow veterinarian every 40 days, and they must start almost immediately.

Can't have these little jokers up the pole!

2) Sleeping boxes. We have an amazing and huge new 'aviary' being built which is almost ready to for our large group of lemurs, but before they can move in we need to have sleeping boxes made. These are important for sleeping (obviously), but also for creating shade (its hot as f*ck here), and giving hide-y spots.

Hard at work on the HUGE new lemur enclosure!

3) Transfer of new lemurs. Yep, we've got more waiting. These have already been seized and held at a government office here in Toliara. We have to pay all of the costs associated with the seizure and work through a tonne of bureaucracy before the animals will be released to us, BUT we're working on it and hope to get them as soon as possible.

And, believe me, the list goes on. For example, we need to hire another keeper for the existing lemurs, and have just heard of a young ring-tailed lemur with a bamboo lemur being kept illegally in a hotel in Fort Dauphin (a few hours' drive and an hour flight south of the Lemur Resce Center). And of course there is the research that we are here to do! That begins tomorrow as we are catching a glorified raft to traverse a portion of the Mozambique channel in a short few hours.

Not my most photogenic moment.
I was however, being scolded by Laurence,
the dominant female at the Lemur Rescue Center
and thought that was worth sharing.

Anyhow, I need to catch some zzzs...

As always, if you'd like to support our lemur rescue work please go to www.lemurlove.org or http://association-reniala.jimdo.com/ to donate. We currently need funding for the second keeper, and to support our incoming lemurs.

Peace out, homies. I will have internet access again in a little under two months <3 p="">