Tens of thousands overwhelm protected Madagascar forest in search of gems

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar—A sapphire rush has brought tens of thousands of people into the remote rainforests of eastern Madagascar, disfiguring a protected environmental area and prompting calls for military intervention.

More high-quality sapphires have been found in the biodiverse area known as Corridor Ankeniheny-Zahamena in the past six months than were found in the entire country over the past 20 years, according to Vincent Pardieu, a French gemologist who has been visiting mines there for more than a decade and was in the area last month.

“I can tell you this is big,” Pardieu said. Gem trade shows around the world now have “nice, big, super-clean sapphires” from the region. “It’s the most important discovery in Madagascar for the past 20 or 30 years.”

Tens of thousands of miners and gem traders have poured into the rainforests around the village of Bemainty, said local officials. The miners have cut down thousands of acres of forest in the protected area, which environmental group Conservation International helps to manage, said the officials.

This island nation is renowned for its biodiversity and the protected forests in the eastern corridor area are “one of Madagascar’s most precious resources,” according to the World Bank. The corridor is home to more than 2,000 plant species found nowhere else on earth and 14 endangered species of lemur, according to the Ministry of Environment, Ecology, and Forests.

With local officials unable to control the situation, Conservation International has called for a military intervention.

“We have made many requests to the government to call the army,” said Bruno Rajaspera, the group’s director of projects. “But there are too many influential people that are involved in the trade of the stones. The government doesn’t dare take concrete action.”

The prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Madagascar produces about half of the world’s high-end sapphires, according to Michael Arnstein, president of The Natural Sapphire Company, a U.S.-based gemstone business.

Arnstein, who has been visiting the country for two decades, said about 70 percent of its sapphire market is controlled by Sri Lankans, who smuggle the gems back to their country to be cut and exported for sale. About $150 million worth of sapphires might leave Madagascar every year, though the exact figure is impossible to know as the industry is not well regulated, he said.

“You have all these small-scale, Wild West operations,” he said. “Everything’s pretty much illegal. There’s no oversight, no taxes. It’s chaos.”

The latest rush for sapphires began about six months ago, leading Madagascar’s government to hold meetings in November and declare the corridor’s protection a national priority. Environmentalists hoped the government would send in the army, as it did during a smaller rush in 2012 after the gems were first discovered in the area. At the time, the government arrested and deported several Sri Lankan gem traders.

The gem traders bring laborers from other parts of Madagascar to the corridor, Rajaspera said. The workers carry in food and equipment by hand, trekking at least five hours through the jungle to reach the mining sites, which are inaccessible by car or motorcycle.