The biodiversity of Madagascar is legendary. Many animal and plant groups are exceptionally rich in species, and in natural forest areas the great majority of all animals and plants are endemic – found only in Madagascar, and often only in a specific small part of Madagascar.  This extraordinary biodiversity is also well known to be extremely highly threatened.

Madagascar is an island located off the southeastern coast of Africa. Because of its long separation from neighboring continents, it split from Africa about 160 million years ago, it contains many endemic species. Of the 294 species recorded on Madagascar, 105 are found nowhere else on earth, and a handful of others are shared only with the neighboring Islands.