Madagascar is in crisis after the African island’s military deposed president Marc Ravalomanana and installed rival Andry Rajoelina in his place.

“A lot of people have been killed, far more than reported in the local and Western press, and the situation has gone from bad to worse,” Steven Goodman, a biologist at Chicago’s Field Museum who is currently in Madagascar, told the ScienceInsider blog.

Amazingly, he adds, “We are still doing field work, but this is rather complicated.”

Ecologists are worried that island’s unique wildlife may be under threat, as conservation is heavily linked to tourism.

“The 400 million dollar tourism industry has just been levelled, and that means trouble ahead for the forests of Madagascar,” one local conservationist told the MongaBay news service, which is keeping his identity secret. “This coup d’etat undermines everything we have worked for for 30 years.”

BBC reporter Richard Black writes:

There are two principal worries; firstly, that a power vacuum and civil unrest will create a situation in which local structures break down, allowing “harvesting” of species (plant or animal) that would be forbidden in more peaceful times – and secondly, that Mr Rajoelina (who has yet to unveil a policy platform on most issues) may turn away from the sustainable development path mapped out under his predecessor.

…

In two previous periods of unrest (1991 and 2001), [Frank Hawkins, Conservation International’s vice-president for Africa,] told me, turn-a-quick-buck “harvesting” is exactly what had happened – with rosewood and the big-headed turtle (now critically endangered) among the prime targets.

Image: NASA