Posted on April, 12 2019

The first season of the documentary series "Our Planet" was launched on 5 April, on Netflix, an online video sharing platform. The exceptional beauty of nature is revealed through eight episodes of 48 minutes each. From ice worlds currently at risk to jungles teeming with incredible animal species, spectators are offered breathtaking and powerful images of the danger of climate change.

The "Our Planet" project is the result of collaboration between WWF, Netflix and Silverback Films. Each episode reveals the different biological wonders from around the world. The dry forests of Madagascar, unique in the world, appear in the eighth episode, focused on forests. In 2016, the project production team filmed various locations in the Kirindy Forest in the Menabe Antimena Protected Area, West of Madagascar. Unfortunately, the forests appearing on the recorded images in 2016 no longer exist today. Indeed, the deforestation in Madagascar is growing at a very fast pace, and Menabe Antimena is one of the Malagasy protected areas hardest hit. In total, it is estimated that Madagascar lost nearly 40% of its forest cover between the 1950s and the 2000s.

Forests are a vital resource for endemic animal species in Madagascar, but also for the people living around them. They guarantee many benefits for all living beings, namely food, drinking water and the air we breathe, just to name but a few. Agricultural practices and the cutting of firewood have caused the loss of the majority of forests in Madagascar. Today, only 3% of Madagascar's dry forests remain.

In response, WWF works with local communities to preserve these natural resources. "At the heart of our work, we build local capacity to protect and restore forests while improving their livelihoods through the promotion of community-based businesses around ecotourism and other value chains, and also to improve access to basic services such as solar electricity and water", says Nanie Ratsifandrihamanana, director of WWF Madagascar.