Evaluating the impact of environmental education around Ranomafana National Park.

A total of 94% of lemur species are currently threatened with extinction and more than 17 species of giant lemur are already extinct. To help prevent the extinction of Madagascar's remaining lemurs, Dr. Patricia Wright initiated conservation programs in the Ranomafana region of southern Madagascar in the 1990s. These continued and expanded, and in 2003 were consolidated with Dr. Wright's research activities when Center ValBio ("CVB") was founded in 2003. CVB believes in the "One Health" approach in understanding the relationship between humans and the environment, and one of their core principles is that effective conservation is science‐based. CVB's environmental education (EE) programs (discussed herein) operate in various primary schools surrounding Ranomafana national park (RNP). The all‐Malagasy team consists of long‐term conservation educators as well as young intern teachers, who together address the issues of valuing lemurs and the forests that they require to survive. In this paper, we will describe three of CVB's EE programs and evaluate their impact. The primary tool used to assess impact was an analysis of pre‐ and post ‐intervention test scores evaluated using a Kruskal–Wallis test. We show that these programs (1) are popular, (2) produce concrete outputs that can change rural villages, and (3) improve local knowledge on the importance of biodiversity and sustainable development. Highlights: Local communities benefit from the conservation of a protected area through an environmental education program that has broad goals.Environmental education generates concrete outputs that can change rural villages for the better.Environmental education improves local knowledge about the importance of biodiversity, and offers paths towards sustainable development and income through tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]