It was just after dawn in the mountainous rainforests of south-eastern Madagascar and the chill morning mists hung over the trees. Patricia Wright, a primatologist from New York, had begun another typical day searching for lemurs when a strange sound caught her attention. "It was a low growl like a motor growing louder," she explains. "Then, suddenly, I saw a pair of eyes among the bamboo to the right of the trail. Ten metres away, a reddish-gold lemur was staring straight at me. The whirring noise intensified as the animal, clinging to the bamboo with one hand, twirled its tail around like an organ grinder's handle. The faster it twirled, the louder the sound became. A second later the lemur was gone, leaping away from trunk to trunk."

Wright had never seen or heard anything like it before - despite the fact that she had been studying Madagascar's lemurs for months. She had been looking for one particular species - the greater bamboo lemur, last sighted 50 years ago in a forest at a much lower elevation, and since declared extinct. But that one was charcoal grey in colour, not golden-red like the one she had just seen. Just as perplexing was the fact that all known lemur alarm calls were short, staccato ‘chucks', quite unlike what she had heard that morning.

At first Wright assumed it must simply have been a colour variation, or a mountain subspecies of the greater bamboo lemur. So there you have it," she says. "A new species and I didn't even know it!" After that first sighting in 1986, the strange lemur wasn't glimpsed for weeks. But eventually it was caught and measurements and tissue samples were taken. Genetic analysis finally declared it a new species. "Naming a species is fun," Wright admits, recollecting how she and colleagues discussed the name for ages, finally deciding on the golden bamboo lemur, Hapalemur aureus, after its golden coloration.

More than 90 per cent of the island's animal species (and essentially all lemurs) are endemic to Madagascar. With less than a thousand remaining, and those restricted almost entirely to one small area of forest, the golden bamboo lemur was declared critically endangered by the IUCN. When, some time later, Wright also ‘rediscovered' the greater bamboo lemur, it meant that two critically endangered lemur species were living in the same area of Madagascar: the Ranomafana forests.

Their discovery precipitated the creation of the Ranomafana National Park in 1991, at a time when only two other parks existed in the country. Once timber extraction began, Wright realised she had to do something urgently to protect the rainforest and save the lemurs from extinction. "Without the new lemurs the park wouldn't have happened," she explains.

A Brooklyn housewife, mother and part-time social worker, Wright's passion for primates began twenty years earlier when she bought a pet monkey in New York. Before long she had taken herself off to the Peruvian rainforest to find it a mate. After that she was hooked. She organised an expedition to Madagascar for herself, her husband and three-year-old daughter to gather data in the first ever study of nocturnal monkeys in the wild. After gaining her doctorate in 1985 with a study of owl monkeys in Peru and Paraguay, she returned to Madagascar. Now a Professor of Anthropology at the State University, New York, she divides her time between teaching, fieldwork and the Ranomafana project.

To the former social worker, it was clear that if places like Ranomafana were to be preserved, the needs of the local community had to be central to conservation efforts, so she ensured that health care and education became part of the project. But Wright is not one for complacency.

"Madagascar is in terrible shape," she says. "It's time, as with a car, to take Madagascar in for repairs. We should be concentrating on reforestation and letting the people who live nearby help."

In spite of her worries about Madagascar's future, Wright's energy and enthusiasm bubble over as she talks about her work, "Science never ceases to be fun," she says. "As soon as you solve one mystery, there are other even more puzzling ones - like the time we discovered that what the golden bamboo lemur was eating was filled with cyanide!"

Lemur Facts
Lemurs are found only in Madagascar and the Comoro Islands.

There are 51 species of lemur, ranging in size from the 25g pygmy mouse lemurs to the 7kg indri.

There are three species of bamboo lemurs (so-called because their diet consists largely of bamboo). The grey bamboo lemur (Hapalemur griseus) is most widespread and occurs as three subspecies (the eastern, the western and the Lac Alaotra reed lemur).

The golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) and greater bamboo lemur (Hapalemur simus) are both particularly fond of giant bamboo, but avoid competition by eating different parts of the plant. Curiously, the golden bamboo lemur is able to tolerate the high levels of cyanide that occur in the bamboo's leaf bases and new shoots.

For more information on lemurs and where to see them in the wild, read Madagascar Wildlife: A Visitor's Guide (Bradt, 2001).

Fact File

Visiting Ranomafana National Park
Ranomafana NP covers 43,500ha of mid-altitude (800-1200m) rainforest and is home to no less than 12 species of lemur, 100 bird varieties and 278 different trees. The park is a 2hr drive on partially paved roads from Fianarantsoa, and an 8-10hr drive from the capital, Antananarivo, 400km away. No camping is permitted inside the park but there are hotels nearby. Park permits and guides are available from the visitor centre at the park entrance, which is located 7km from Ranomafana at Ambodiamontana. The best time to visit is from July to October.