Lemur-saving plan gives them an island

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson plans to create a colony of lemurs on an undeveloped island he owns in the Caribbean, saying Monday it’s a “radical idea” to save an endangered primate that is disappearing from its native African habitat.

Branson, who has long been involved in efforts to save threatened animals around the world, said he plans to bring the first group of about 30 lemurs from zoos in coming weeks to Moskito Island, part of the British Virgin Islands, where they would be the only wild population outside of Africa.

Experts determined that lemurs would find a suitable habitat on Moskito Island, about 85 miles from Puerto Rico, with its plentiful tamarind trees for food and lack of humans to encroach on their territory, he said.

“I was really trying to come up with a radical idea to save them,” Branson told the Associated Press in a phone interview from nearby Necker Island, which he also owns.

The businessman and adventurer has secured permission from the government of the British territory to import the lemurs and said he hopes to find a way to address concerns of critics who fear the non-native primates will harm local birds and lizards. He said he plans to start with the relatively common ring-tailed lemurs, which he is acquiring from zoos in Africa, Sweden and Canada, but hopes to eventually have more than a dozen species on Moskito.

Lemurs are found only on Madagascar and the Comoro Islands and are considered the most threatened of all primates, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Branson’s plans to introduce lemurs on 170-acre Moskito Island have come under strong criticism on environmental grounds from some quarters.

James “Skip” Lazell, a biologist who has been doing research in the British Virgin Islands for 31 years and has worked with Branson in the past, says “it’s a horrible idea” to introduce non-native species. Lemurs can be omnivorous and could end up eating the eggs of birds or a type of small lizard that exists only in the British Virgin Islands, he said.

“I am in principle opposed to the introduction of any exotic species into any environment,” Lazell said by phone from Jamestown, R.I. “It just never works. It violates basic principles of nature.”

Branson said he hopes to meet with Lazell and other scientists and find ways to resolve their concerns. He said the lemurs’ diet could include “maybe the odd gecko,” but there are hundreds of thousands of lizards on Moskito Island and he doubts the lemurs will affect them in any significant way.

“The gecko population is certainly not going to be in danger whereas the lemurs are,” he said. “Sometimes one has to balance what’s right for the greater good. I think that if we can get a few islands in the world for the lemurs I personally think that would be a positive thing to do.”