Welcome to my JustGiving page, I'm Lizzy and I'm a primate keeper at Port Lympne Reserve, Kent. Port Lympne along with it's sister park Howletts Wild Animal Park come under The Aspinall Foundation, an internationally renowned conservation charity.

The Aspinall Foundation has been working with partners across the globe to return endangered animals back to their natural environments. One of the foundation's projects is based in Madagascar,  where they fund Malagasy scientists and students to work with the local rangers to study the lemurs, helping to understand their feeding habits, social dynamics, and population trends to inform long-term conservation plans.

They are also involved in other activities that include working with local schools, where they distribute educational materials to raise awareness and run teaching sessions, as well as facilitating reforestation projects, which encourage local people to engage with protecting the precious rainforest the lemurs inhabit. 

Their small team work across a number of sites in three regions to find, monitor and protect endangered lemurs and their habitats.The foundation works with threatened lemur species such as the Black and White Ruffed Lemur, Indri, Red-bellied Lemur, Crowned Sifaka, Mongoose Lemur and Greater Bamboo Lemur.

The Foundation has had great success with this project, with one example being The Greater Bamboo Lemur. The Greater Bamboo Lemur is one of the most threatened of all lemurs, and one of the rarest primates in the world. Surveys carried out in 2009 by The Aspinall Foundation’s teams doubled the number of locations where they were known to occur. Having discovered these new sites they immediately established, and funded, community-based conservation projects to protect and monitor the areas. Consequently, the Greater Bamboo Lemur was removed from the list of the 25 most endangered primates in the world, for the first time in a decade.

Thanks to the work of The Aspinall Foundation and other committed organisations, the estimated population size of the Greater Bamboo Lemur has risen since 2009 from 100 to 1,000 individuals.  Almost 100 babies were recorded across these groups in 2014 alone, and this trend continues with similar numbers in 2015 and 2016.

On the 29th October I will be taking part in a 20 mile walk through the New Forest as part of the Walk 4 Wildlife, to raise money for The Aspinall Foundation's Madagascar Projects. Lemurs have got to be one of my favourite groups of species, they are such a diverse group right from the tiny Mouse Lemur up to the great Indri. There are over 100 lemur species,  of which I am lucky enough to work with 5 of these amazing species, however in their native home of Madagascar they are considered the most endangered mammal group in the world. Therefore if we don't act now and their habitats continue to be destroyed then it won't just be one species affected, we could loose many of these wonderful creatures. I therefore want to do my bit to  help conserve them.

country, and your donation could make a significant difference to the
local community and their involvement in animal protection. I've set my target at £250, which could let the foundation reach 200 classrooms at schools in their project zones continuing their vital education conservation work; with as little as double this (£500) funding one of the lemur patrollers for a year. 

So please dig deep and help make a difference! Thank You!

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Photos credit to Tony King and The Aspinall Foundation