Madagascar's First Canopy Walkway to be Built in Ranomafana National Park

By Johanna Mitra, CVB/ICTE Communications Officer; January 30, 2023

Centre ValBio is excited to announce the construction of Madagascar’s first canopy walkway right here in Ranomafana National Park, in collaboration with MISSION GREEN and the TREE Foundation. This canopy walkway will join eight others around the world, as part of MISSION GREEN’s goal to build ten walkways in ten biodiversity hotspots within the decade.

The project began in 2022 with preliminary visits by MISSION GREEN Founder Dr. Meg Lowman, TREE Foundation President Elizabeth Moore, and engineer Robbie Oates to tour and select potential sites. This January, Robbie Oates, along with engineers Michael Johnson and Jason Lindsey, returned to CVB to begin drawing up the plans. Construction is expected to begin in August 2023.

Dr. Meg Lowman and Robbie Oates scope out potential trees for the canopy walkway. Photo courtesy of Dede Randrianarista

Johnson and Lindsey, who both started in the zipline and challenge course industry, describe the canopy walkway as a “quieter and gentler” way to explore the treetops, in contrast to the noise and thrill associated with ziplining. The walkway will stretch approximately 150 meters and consist of six cable bridges connecting platforms built around carefully selected trees and raised to about 50 feet above the forest floor. In choosing the trees around which to build the canopy walkway, Robbie Oates and the team from MISSION GREEN worked carefully with local botanists and technicians to identify each tree species, assess their strength and size, and identify those, such as hardwood trees, that would best hold up the platforms. It was also necessary to consider the importance of the trees as food sources for lemurs, as many of the selected trees bear their preferred fruits. The walkway will therefore open up a new avenue for researchers to conduct observational studies of lemurs, botanical studies, and a plethora of other opportunities that this newfound access to the forest canopy will grant.

CVB technician Georges Rene takes the GPS coordinates of a tree while planning the course of the walkway. Photo courtesy of Johanna Mitra

The canopy walkway is also expected to boost ecotourism in the region and Madagascar as a whole. Projects like this one, Johnson says, are gaining in popularity as a form of tourism primarily because of their accessibility. “You don’t have to be in a harness, and you don’t have to know how to climb a tree. In this instance, you can walk right off the ground and the next thing you know, you're right up in the trees with all the plants, animals, and everything else in the forest.” The walkway’s completion will mark a new and exciting chapter in the history of Ranomafana National Park for both researchers and tourists.

Many thanks go to Dr. Meg Lowman and Elizabeth Moore for their support for this exciting endeavor!