Arahara (Phylloxylon xiphoclada (Baker) Du Puy, Labat &Schrire) Case Study
Home > Biodiversity Nature & People > Conservation Philanthropy > Grants > MBZF Grant 12053781
Continent: Africa
Country: Madagascar
Grant Amount: $4,000
Awarded Date: June 20, 2012
Rakotonirina Nivohenintsoa
Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre
Lot VA 19 L Tsiadana
Antananarivo
Antananarivo
101
Madagascar
Tel: 00261 020 78 121 21
Mob:
Determining the status and ecology of the Arahara
Critically Endangered, Rare, Phylloxylon xiphoclada (Fabaceae): shrub, flattened, cladodinous stems,white, pea-like flowers. Its wood exceptionally hard ,used for tool handles, to have medicinal uses. Herbarium specimens collected from a small area (less than 10 km²) on the Malagasy Highlands. Most of the plants in the population had been burnt by a wildfire. Such fires are frequent, major threat to the survival of this species.
The Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) was founded in 1859 by Henry Shaw (1800-1889), has developed the world's largest botanical database, TROPICOS (accessible at http://www.mobot.org). The MBG has had an active program in Madagascar for three decades, focusing for most of this period on taxonomic research and in-country capacity building. However, during the last ten years, partly as a result of an increased awareness stimulated by several projects aimed at informed conservation (e.g., our “Red List for Species in Madagascar’s Endemic Plant Families initiatives), the staff of the MBG Madagascar Program have become increasingly concerned that plant conservation efforts in Madagascar are very far from adequate. With the mission “To discover, understand, and conserve the plants of Madagascar, in order to sustain and enrich life”, MBG had an urgent obligation to help rectify this situation and identified actions to improve the conservation status of the Malagasy flora: 1) analysis of botanical information to assist in conservation planning and decision-making; 2) improved advocacy for the conservation of Malagasy plants; 3) species-focused conservation of plants on the very brink of extinction; and 4) catalysis of conservation at priority areas for plant conservation that we have identified as likely
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