January 31, 2023
I went to Madagascar, and I was laser beam focused on lemurs. You know, as one is during their PhD… I was a scientist, and I basically had blinders on… I obviously knew the problems happening in Madagascar, I had been living there previously. But I just focused singularly on this question. And then, I realized that I can’t solve this problem or address these issues without including these communities that are living in connection to these lemurs. So I had to figure out a way to combine the two; otherwise, it just wasn’t tenable. You know, I have a privileged position as a professor at a university… my lifestyle is privileged. And yet I couldn’t have done all the work I’ve done to get here without help from the people in these communities.
DR. TRAVIS STEFFENS – ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH AND FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF PLANET MADAGASCAR
