A FORMER Kirkcudbright Academy pupil is embarking on a journey to magical Madagascar, to take part in a ten-week charity expedition.
In order to help raise funding for her trip, 18 year-old Verity Flett will be dressing up in a lemur suit last worn at the premier of Disney’s ‘Madagascar’ and hanging out with the real thing at the lemur enclosure at the Galloway Wildlife Conservation Park, Kirkcudbright, during the Easter weekend.
She will also be helping to educate people about the fuzzy and inquisitive animals, and entertaining youngsters with face painting.
Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world and is home to an extraordinary diversity of plants and animals, over 80 percent of which can be found nowhere else on earth, such as lemurs. Although it is biologically one of the richest places in the world, its inhabitants are amongst the very poorest.
The key aims of her trip are to live and work alongside remote village communities, helping them to build better futures through building more wells to provide clean water, protecting villagers from the spread of cholera, establshing community market gardens and beehives to improve nutrition and provide incomes and, to monitor the endangered lemur species.
John Denerley, director of the park said: “We are very pleased to support her project, because the ring-tailed lemur is classified as ‘vulnerable’, which means it faces a high risk of extinction in the future. However, ongoing research and monitoring of the wild population and education of their human co-inhabitants is essential in order to provide this distinctive and fascinating species of lemur with the best chance of survival.”
The four lemurs who currently live at the park are all involved in captive breeding.
Verity is due to head off to the island on the southeast African coast on July 6, after securing one of 50 places on four annual Pioneer schemes run by the charity ‘Azafady’.
As part of the scheme, Verity needs to raise a minimum donation of £2000, which goes directly to support Azafady’s work, with only a tiny proportion covering food, training and travel.
For further information on Azafady and the Pioneer scheme, visit www.madagascar.co.uk.
To make a donation on behalf of Verity, to assist her to her target call 02089606629.
