Dr Herizo Andrianandrasana

Dr Herizo Andrianandrasana 

Herizo completed his DPhil in 2017 at the Oxford Long Term Ecology Lab, University of Oxford. To our knowledge, Herizo is the first Malagasy person to be awarded a doctorate degree at the University of Oxford in its history. He gained a Forestry degree in 2000 and a DEA (MSc) on Ecology and Development in 2009 from the Department of Forestry, University of Antananarivo Madagascar. He also obtained  a Postgraduate Diploma in international wildlife conservation practice from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford in 2009. In 2014 he won the Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa, presented by HRH Prince William, for his conservation work in his homeland of Madagascar.

Herizo is a conservation practitioner with interests in ecological monitoring and GIS. He devotes most of his time to designing methods of participatory ecological monitoring and identifying the best ways to achieve conservation success in developing countries such as Madagascar. For the last 17 years he has worked for the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust Madagascar Programme as the coordinator of ecological monitoring and protected areas. He is particularly dedicated to maximising the potential of local communities and stakeholders for conservation and monitoring towards better management of natural resources.

He has been instrumental in establishing a system of ecological protection in Madagascar, by providing technical support for the implementation of 5 out of 125 officially designated Protected Areas and the creation of 3 Ramsar sites. By training 460 local patrollers in the weekly collection of data on biodiversity and threats  he has also made a substantial contribution to the adoption of participatory ecological monitoring techniques.

Herizo’s passionate devotion to the community-based conservation approach has achieved remarkable results. His main concern is how to develop cost effective conservation programmes by integrating the community in efficient decision making. He is also interested in exploring the effective contribution that local community members can make to protect ecosystem services by sustaining financially motivating social enterprises which could reduce poverty.

In his DPhil, under the supervision of Prof Kathy Willis, Dr Peter Long and Dr Richard Young, Herizo looked at the effectiveness of community-based conservation projects in conserving biodiversity, protecting ecosystem services and improving human wellbeing in Madagascar. Using remote sensing techniques with satellite data from 1984 to 2014, village questionnaires (developed with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Department of International Development, University of Oxford), and household surveys (based on 6,540 households within 214 villages in 5 key conservation sites), Herizo investigated whether the community-based conservation projects implemented by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust Madagascar programme have improved the conservation of biodiversity and protection of provisioning ecosystem services, and enhanced people’s wellbeing.

He evaluated important response variables such as Multidimensional Poverty Index along with some subjective wellbeing indicators (happiness, trust and empowerment), government records on school attendance, school attainment, health records, and DMSP OLS night lights to understand impacts of community-based conservation projects on human wellbeing. He has used more than 2,000 Landsat images to understand forest loss, land cover change, suitable habitat for key species, habitat fragmentation and invasive plants. He also used AVHRR and MODIS data to measure the rate of change of active fires and the quantity of AGB, NPP forest, NPP croplands etc in each village.

Selected Publications

Waeber, PO, Ratsimbazafy JH, Andrianandrasana HT, Ralainasolo, FB, & Nievergelt, CM (2018). Hapalemur alaotrensis, a conservation case study from the swamps of Alaotra, Madagascar. In: Primates in Flooded Habitats; Ecology and Conservation – some general information. Barnett AA, Matsuda, I, & Nowak, K (eds). DOI: 10.1017/9781316466780.038

Hudson M., Andrianandrasana T.H., Lewis R., Gerrie R. and Concannon L. (2018) Unprecedented rates of deforestation in Menabe Antimena: Can we halt this catastrophic damage? Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. www.durrell.org

GOFC-GOLD (2017) A Sourcebook of Methods and Procedures for Monitoring Essential Biodiversity Variables in Tropical Forests with Remote Sensing. Eds: GOFC-GOLD & GEO BON. Report version UNCBD COP-13, GOFC-GOLD Land Cover Project Office, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. ISSN: 2542-6729. http://www.gofcgold.wur.nl/sites/gofcgold-geobon_biodiversitysourcebook.php

Zinner,D., Wygoda,C., Razafimanantsoa,L., Rasoloarison,R., Andrianandrasana,HT., Ganzhorn,J.U. & Toler, F. (2014) Analysis of deforestation patterns in the central Menabe, Madagascar, between 1973 and 2010. Regional Environmental Change 14: 157–166