Lemurs are at risk. So are the people protecting them.

Patricia Wright arrived in Madagascar nearly four decades ago to look for a lemur thought to be extinct. She found it, along with a new species, and then ran headlong into a broader reality: protecting wildlife would depend on the well-being of the people living alongside it. Her discoveries eventually led to the creation of Ranomafana National Park, today a UNESCO site. Yet the forces that threaten the island’s forests have only grown more entangled. “Poverty is the enemy of conservation here in Madagascar,” she says. It is not a line delivered lightly. Roughly four out of five Malagasy live in poverty, and for many families forests are still the last resort when the economy falters. In a year marked by political turmoil and a slump in tourism, Wright says she has seen the pressure intens