Help Farmers Rear Silk Moths to Restore Forests

At the moment, she is traveling from Maroantsetra to Ambodivoangy to visit the first farmers who have contracted to raise silk worms. Cay will be in Madagascar till early November. Her major goals are to hold a workshop to teach the farmers how to fabricate a kind of paper from the cocoons and to introduce the idea of farmer networks--an echelon structure that will allow the more entrepreneurial farmers to enlist their peers to scale the CPALI project to the point that it advances from demonstration to true production.

Today I learned that the CPALI project has been admitted to Global Giving's "Green" list, which gives us greater access to matching funds and corporate visibility. Of course, we are striving to make the project economically self-sufficient and have this year covered about 5% of our operating expenses with silk-derived revenue--small but, hey, it's a start.

Cay is also scouting for new sites that will leverage well with plans of the large conservation organizations who are active in Madagascar. So far, the major effects she has felt from the political situation has been uncertainty about getting export permits for when we want to move production quantities of silk--the officials who would process the requests are themselves uncertain about what the future will bring.

The CPALI project is now listed on the ActionAtlas, a project being produced by the National Geographic Society. It is not yet "live" but you can still see Cay's Blog if you point a browser to http://actionatlas.org and then search for CPALI. Most of the entries on the blog are directed at fifth graders who are being taught by an old friend of Cay's.

Finally, I invite you to view the great video that Sharon Pieczenik made of Erik Patel's work on the endangered silky sifakas. We hope one day to be able to contribute to preserving the habitat of the "angels of the forest".

Links:

• Great Video about Erik Patel's work on the Silky Sifakas

Dear Colleagues and Friends The weather is getting hot again in Maroantsetra and that make emerge the chrysalid fastly, so we have many eggs now, Denis is producing a few cocoons now but for us we had trouble again because many of our larvae were dead at stage 4, but we are still continuing to rear larvae in the garden. Many eggs are hatching everyday. Only 30 cocoons have been produced in Maroantsetra during August, and twice in Denis`rearing.

It`s really important to intercrop the talandoha with a taller plants to shade the talandoha because only the larvae in the shade were survived. in opposite , in April only the larvae in an open area were survived so now we have lots of experiences about the rearing.

In Manaby, most of Denis`s trees were shaded so that allow him to produced more than iMaroantsetra. I`ll inform Jaonary Jean about all of that. When the farmers finish to farm 1000 trees, we must sensibilate them to intercrop the trees with a big plant like casava, banana...

Denis is working on the talandoha farming, so He is getting many seedlings and if it`s continuing like that we will be able to provide seedling to all interested farmers. I`ll visit Denis land on Saturday because he had a small problem in his land, An hydroelectric company has been set up in Ivoloina to provide electricity to all the Analanjirofo region, so the equipments pass over Denis land and he must move his house to another place always in his land. Fortunately our talandoha trees are still there , and no problem for the Cpali project. The advantage for that hydroelectricity is that Manambia may get an electricity and we can move the project to Manambia in the future (but right now , that seems take so long time).

The attached are photos of earrings that CPALI hopes to sell on its website - There are made from comet moth silk. We are making similar earring from suraka silk that we hope will be ready for the Christmas holiday!

Best wishes, Mamy