COSAP SAHAMALAZA

COSAP or Comité d'Orientation et Soutien à l'Aire Protégée Sahamalaza is a platform established in September 2008. It is composed by 30 bureau members some of them are local comity-based conservation (65%), economic operators, civil society and local government and traditional authorities.

The main objective for establishing this platform is to manage, with Madagascar National Parks (NGO), the Sahamalaza biosphere reserve and national park.  

The COSAP main activities are:

- local population environmental awareness

- conflict resolution

- local development support

- maintenance of park boundaries and others infrastructures,

- patrol of national park and monitoring activities

It is noted that the number of local comity-based conservation is now 300 persons.

They participate also in the dugong and seagrass conservation in the Sahamalaza area

The Dugong and Seagrass Conservation Project

The Dugong and Seagrass Conservation Project aims to improve the protection and conservation of dugongs and their seagrass habitats around the world, focusing on the dugong range states of: Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mozambique, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste and Vanuatu.

Traditional hunters tell of times when dugongs were an inexhaustible resource. European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries write of vast herds of animals in shallow waters from East Africa to the Western Pacific Islands. Herds could still be seen in many places across the dugong's range as late as the 1960s. No longer. The International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List now lists the dugong as Vulnerable. The dugong is rarely sighted and it is at a high risk of extinction throughout most of its vast range. Projections indicate that the dugong faces extinction within the next 40 years.

Human activities pose the greatest threats to dugong survival; they are still hunted by some communities, often drown in gillnets set by fishers for other species, and suffer mortal wounds from boat collisions. But perhaps the greatest threat to the survival of the dugong is the destruction of its only food source, seagrass beds. Often overlooked and misunderstood, seagrasses are essential to productive marine ecosysem, playing a play a vital role in the life cycle of many species. It is estimated that seagrass beds are vanishing at around 7% a year as a result of human activities.

This project is the first coordinated global effort to conserve dugongs and their seagrass habitats. At the heart of the project lies the ambition to mobilise community participation and ownership of dugong and seagrass conservation, focusing on introducing sustainable fisheries practices and innovative financial incentives, establishing Locally Managed Marine Protected Areas (LMMPA), and mainstreaming dugong and seagrass conservation priorities into national and regional policies and planning.

The project is implemented via 41 Project Partners, a collection of government, non-governmental and community organisations, located in the eight duging range countries and will be executed between January 2015 - December 2018. The total cost of the project is budgeted to be USD 105,183,061, of which USD 5,884,018 will be contributed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

COSAP Activities

This is a Kalakajoro island one of the four Radama islands where someone have found a dogong ten years ago

— Patrol activity—

in the mangrove forest of the national park

Every month the local comity-based conservation realizes the patrol activity in the mangrove forest and in marine parcel of the Sahamalaza national park. They work in group of two or three persons.