Tipperary man to embark on wildlife conservation mission to Madagascar

Tipperary man Darren O’Sullivan is getting set to take off on an ambitious conservation mission at the end of this month.

The Thurles native will head to Madagascar at the end of this week on a mission with the charity Seed Africa, aiding with the charity’s wildlife and nature conservation efforts.

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Speaking with the Tipperary Star, Darren spoke of the reasons behind him wanting to pursue this mission, and what work he will be undertaking whilst on the island.

“I’m going to Madagascar. I found a UK-registered charity called Seed Madagascar, and I’ve been really impressed with their work. They do livelihood programmes and conservation research programs in the south east of Madagascar in a place called Sainte Luce. Sainte Luce is a really unique kind of environment. It’s one of Madagascar’s last remaining littoral forests. A littoral forest is one that’s kind of tidal, so it’s like wetlands, as such. Madagascar has interested me since, I remember at like six or seven years-old, flicking through National Geographic magazines and seeing some animals, one particularly called the aye-aye, but also lemurs and chameleons and all these have interested me since I was so young, and Madagascar, since it’s such a global biodiversity hot spot, about 90% of its plants and animals are found nowhere else. It’s like the Mecca for a young naturalist. So I’ve always wanted to go, and now, I mean, I finished my engineering degree and did my graduate studies, and now I finally have the opportunity to go out and follow that dream. And I’m lucky enough to have found a charity that I believe in, and can go and actually not just explore, but actually give back. I’ve raised a good bit of money doing that as well.”

Darren spoke of the work he will be engaging in while in Madagascar, adding to the already huge efforts being made by the charity to conserve the wildlife population on the island and the upskilling of the population.

“They’ve been in the Anosy region. So there’s a town called Fort-Dauphin down in the south-east, and they set up there almost 20 years ago, and they do a whole bunch of programmes now. So they do conservation research, for reforestation, then community education, health programmes, like teaching the locals how to eat hygienically or wash, keep clean and not get infectious diseases as much. Also, they try to upskill the communities there. So I know they have one really successful programme that they do for the women in the area with crafting workshops. So they’ve up-skilled them in stitch standards. They’ve taught embroidery and language and business skills to local women to employ for a sustainable livelihood.

“Madagascar is statistically now, the tenth poorest country in the world, and their GDP per capita is $2,000, like most of these people are living on less than a Euro a day. Most are subsistence farmers. So they cook what they eat and only that, and a lot of them have nothing to do to raise more money. So an example of that Project Stitches Sainte-Luce, when they teach business skills, embroidery, and crafting to the women there, they can then upsell their products to western people, for example, and they have suddenly a new income, and they don’t need to stay in the same cycle that they were in.

“I’m heading to the conservation and research team, so they’re based in Sainte Luce, effectively in the forest. Essentially, there’s a research site set up there, and I’ll be staying with the other research team in a tent for a month at a time, for two months, and mostly we’ll be doing wildlife surveys, and forestry restoration. So for the wildlife surveys, it’s really important to monitor the populations of, for one thing, lemurs. So lemurs are the most endangered mammal at the moment, so 98% of the species are classified as endangered, with 31% crucially endangered. So it’s really important to monitor the population so you know what’s going on. And then what they do is they plant wildlife corridors so groups can move between forest fragments. It’s like stitching the habitat back together. Madagascar has, like certain industries that are kind of encroaching into the native forest there. You can’t really blame the local populations for their farming methods, because they need to survive. But if, for example, the land is no good, they might have to clear forests through burning it down, and then they suddenly have new land to plant,and because they don’t have those farming methods, the land will get used up very quickly again.”

Darren was drawn to the idea of wildlife conservation from a very young age, owing his interest to the many days he spent outside at home as a child, which nurtured his inner naturalist, leading to him pursuing this mission.

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“I can remember being three years-old, two years-old, maybe, and my pastime would be in the garden, I’d be lifting up rocks and collecting bugs. So I’m super interested in, like, any type of wildlife. But I then, of course, loved David Attenborough’s documentaries, and he was one of the first, in the 50s or 60s, to go to Madagascar, and his documentaries on Madagascar are fantastic. It split off around 100 and 80 million years ago, from mainland Africa, and it hadn’t been populated by humans until only 2000 years ago. So all these, like fauna, has been able to evolve just completely uniquely. So it’s like a different world. Naturalists call it the eighth continent, because it’s so unique. And then the people there are super cool as well. They were populated first by the Asian island nations, like the Philippines in Indonesia from the east, and then from Africa.”

Darren has been working over the last number of months to raise money for the charity, and at the time of writing, has raised over €3,500 for Seed Madagascar, which goes entirely to the charity, with him paying to make his own way to the island.

“The fundraising has been absolutely insane, like it’s so nuts when you start to ask people. I knew I was going to go to Madagascar quite early this year. I originally planned to go myself, and then looked into some charities, and then there were a couple of, like, ‘voluntourism’ charities, they weren’t charities, but you’re basically paying to go over and do kind of fake charity work when you look into it, it wasn’t great, they’re making profits. And then I found Seed Madagascar, and I was like, ‘wow, this is perfect.’ They make a lot of money through volunteering work. So they bring over volunteers, and you have to raise money. So I’m paying all my own way there, so all my flights and my travel, my tent. The only thing I won’t be paying for myself is my food, but food per day would probably cost to make, probably 50 cent. So everything that I raise will be going straight to the charity, which is brilliant for one thing. The minimum to raise, there was a target of £2,100. I realized I had to do this fairly early, around April, but because of the whole asking for money thing and not knowing how to do it, it took me a while to start, but when I did, I probably started in July, I started, firstly with the company I was working with, and I did a few talks there about my journey, and immediately, just so many donations came in through the website and right through my Enthuse web page. I couldn’t believe it. Like people are so kind when they know what you’re doing and they believe it’s for a good cause.

“It became, I’m not saying easy to ask for money, but I was shocked at how willing people were to just donate to this cause. I was really impressed.”

Darren said that he wishes to thank everyone who donated anything throughout his fundraising campaign, owing to how much even the small donations are able to make a difference to him and his efforts.

Darren’s Enthuse donation page is still open, and can be accessed here for anyone who wishes to donate to him and his journey, ahead of his departure at the end of this week.