Natural Resource Use

Currently, whereas extraction of oil and gas, commercialagriculture and energy are not considered as a threat in the MaMaBay region,illegal logging of precious wood has already caused important damages onbiodiversity and habitats destruction, especially in the Masoala area. Onlysmall scale illegal mining for quartz and gold currently exists in the Makiraarea but it could represent a serious potential threat if not controlled. 

As for commercial fisheries, due mainly to the lack of legal texts onfisheries, there is a strong conflict between traditional and industrialfisheries resulting in an over-exploitation of the halieutic resources in theAntongil Bay area.  With the putting inplace of small scale community fisheries reserves, the establishment of “schémad’aménagement” for the Antongil bay and the putting in place of theconsultation platform PCDDBA (Plateforme de Concertation pour le DéveloppementDurable de la Baie d’Antongil) which regroups more than a hundred of communityassociations, WCS has somehow managed to limit the damages related totraditional fisheries but not the industrial fisheries. A series of researchesand ecological monitoring activities have been carried out to regularly assessthe status of the ecosystems.