Malagasy giant rat  (Hypogeomys antimena)

Like many of Madagascar’s unique species, the Malagasy giant rat is thought to have become highly endangered due to habitat loss and disturbance, and predation by and competition with introduced species (8). For centuries Madagascar’s forests have experienced successive waves of degradation at the hands of human colonists, each with different destructive patterns of land use (7). In more recent years, illegal and commercial logging, charcoal production and burning to clear land for agriculture or cattle pasture have all had a devastating impact, often changing open forest into dense, shrubby undergrowth unsuitable as rat habitat or destroying the vegetation completely (3). The rats continue to suffer from human disturbance in the remaining forests, which are used by the villagers to gather firewood, collect honey, dig up edible roots, and hunt tenrecs and lemurs (3) (7). Predation by introduced predators such as dogs may also be playing a significant role in this species’ decline (3).

This large rodent is in urgent need of conservation and its future remains highly uncertain. The Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is currently working closely with the Madagascan government and local community to help protect the species, and has also established a captive breeding programme (5). The Menabe Forest, an Alliance for Zero Extinction site due to the presence of this and a number of other endangered species, was previously heavily impacted by subsistence farming, wood extraction, and livestock ranching. Fortunately, in order to protect its unique but rapidly diminishing biodiversity, the Madagascan government aims to expand the nation’s protected area network and, on March 28, 2006, the Minister of the Environment, Water and Forests signed a decree giving 125,000 hectares of Menabe Forest temporary protected status. This is the first step towards making the site an official protected area. However, while community and conservation groups have begun the slow process of agreeing on the official boundaries and goals of the new protected area (9), prospectors have begun using dynamite to search for oil reserves in Menabe, causing concerns about further forest degradation (7). Official, full protected status is urgently needed in this area if the Malagasy giant rat is to be successfully brought back from the brink of extinction.