Madagascar stands at the front lines of both biodiversity loss and climate change impacts, harboring some of the world's most endangered species in its last remaining 5% of standing rainforest. With an average annual household income of less than $100, the people of southern Madagascar are equally endangered, enduring the first drought and famine officially attributed to climate change in 2021-2023. In a land wracked by wildfires every year, there is a desperate need to restore Madagascar's forests, as quickly and efficiently as possible, before time runs out for millions of people and countless species, including every lemur species on Earth.

It is here that The Phoenix Conservancy has developed a successful, innovative approach to restoring rainforest: Foxhole Forests. Within a circular firebreak, dense plantings of fast-growing tree seeds are sheltered from fires, creating new islands of forest without creating a fuel ladder for fire to climb from grass into standing forest canopies.

Better still, this approach is inherently modular and scalable, allowing us to directly provide economic benefits to community members in multiple ways throughout the restoration process by:
-Directly purchasing seeds collected locally from individuals for use in restoration
-Creating thousands of temporary jobs planting rainforest and building firebreaks
-Generating multiple social enterprise commodities through strategic species use, including marula oil and voatsiperifery peppercorns
-Increasing crop yields in areas surrounding the forest, as regenerating forest retains increased water on the landscape

To date, the project has directly helped more than 6,000 individuals, who have directly informed our organization that they were able to survive recent famines only because of income earned planting their own rainforests. The iconic Ring-tailed Lemurs of Madagascar are found in Ivohiboro, and are benefitting from this regenerating forest alongside its people.