Lemurpalooza festival promotes Adopt-a-Lemur program, sponsors lemur conservation

<p>The Lemur Center’s festival showcased six lemurs up for adoption, including one who was featured in an IMAX documentary.</p>

The Lemur Center’s festival showcased six lemurs up for adoption, including one who was featured in an IMAX documentary.

The Duke Lemur Center hosted its biannual Lemurpalooza Friday to raise money for its Adopt-a-Lemur program.

Lemurpalooza allowed visitors to stroll through the center at their own pace without a normal guided tour, learn about lemur biology and conservation from experts scattered throughout the center and eat food from local food trucks—all for a $50 donation per car. The center’s parking lot was kept busy with about 70 attending cars filled with lemur lovers of all ages.

“It costs $7,400 a year per lemur to care for it, house it and give it great medical care,” said Sara Clark,  director of communications at the Lemur Center. “Duke does give us some funding and we get funding through grants, but a lot of that extra income is made up by private donations, so that’s so important for us.”

The Adopt-a-Lemur program allows lemur fans to donate anywhere from $50 to $7,400 to help with the cost of housing, feeding, daily care, health care and training for a single lemur. There are currently six lemurs up for adoption, including Raven, described as the Lemur Center’s "movie star" fat-tailed dwarf lemur for her appearance in "Island of Lemurs: Madagascar," an IMAX documentary. 

Although the Lemur Center is focused on studying lemurs and connecting that research to help humans, the center also hopes to promote conservation efforts, because lemurs received the title of the world's most endangered mammals in 2012.

The Duke Lemur Center has helped organize and manage conservation efforts in Madagascar for more than 35 years with its most recent effort being the SAVA Project in the SAVA region of Madagascar. 

Marina Blanco, a post-doctoral project coordinator currently living in Madagascar, attended the event and helped educate visitors at the SAVA Project booth. The SAVA Project, which was started by the center four years ago, is a conservation initiative based in Madagascar that provides locals with education and tools to help them survive without further harming the forests. 

Examples include growing yams instead of rice, which requires further deforestation. These solutions in turn help save the lives of lemurs and their habitats, Blanco said. Donations from the Adopt-a-Lemur program also help fund the SAVA Project.

Blanco’s focus is on research, but she also gets involved in the conservation efforts by bringing students from the local university in Madagascar with her to conduct her research. 

“You have a possibility to bring ideas from people here in the U.S. and bring those ideas and test them in the field,” Blanco said. “People here have a lot of things that they would like to contribute. I mean yes, it’s all to save the lemurs, but you can feel more compelled to invest in education, environmental education, so there are options in working with schools and kids to develop gardens, to develop conservation activities.”

The event attracted families from Durham and Chapel Hill as well as some from outside North Carolina.

“The facility is beautiful and the volunteers and staff are just wonderful,” said sisters Barbara Akle and Helen Christy, who are visiting from out of state. “It looks like the animals aren’t stressed or anything, it looks like they’re being cared for and I love the idea that they have the forest around and they can also be free. It’s a beautifully maintained and well-done operation.”

There will also be a commemorative exhibit in the Chappell Gallery of Perkins Library, scheduled to open Oct. 20. with a formal ceremony Oct. 27 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Lemur Center.

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