{"id":5076,"date":"2019-09-04T09:54:44","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T06:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5076"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:31","slug":"birdsong-returns-to-the-hills-of-bemolanga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/09\/04\/birdsong-returns-to-the-hills-of-bemolanga\/","title":{"rendered":"Birdsong Returns To The Hills Of Bemolanga"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>By\nUN Environment<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hills surrounding\nAhbohibary Kofay used to be filled with birdsong, says Lydia, who tends a small\nrice paddy outside the tiny village at the bottom of Bemolanga valley. That was\nuntil this area in Western Madagascar was laid to waste by fire in the early\n1990s. The fire killed the trees and the birds fell silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere was a forest\nhere before,\u201d she says, indicating the corrugated slopes spreading to the\nhorizon beyond her family\u2019s fields. \u201cBecause of the bush fire, now it\u2019s like\nthis. Birds can\u2019t live without trees.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without the trees holding\nthe soil together, the land at the top of the valley started to erode. Every\ntime it rained, streams carved deeper scars into the landscape\u2014gullies known\nlocally as lavaka\u2014sending red soil down the valley and silting up the\nvillagers\u2019 fields. The local spring dried up and Lydia\u2019s rice harvest fell by\nalmost a third, forcing her family of six to put less on their plate, and\ngiving them less to sell. Struggling to pay her children\u2019s school fees, Lydia\nwas forced to take her eldest son out of school. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unenvironment.org\/news-and-stories\/story\/birdsong-returns-hills-bemolanga\">Read more&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By UN Environment The hills surrounding Ahbohibary Kofay used to be filled with birdsong, says Lydia, who tends a small rice paddy outside the tiny village at the bottom of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}