The Montagne des Français Protected Harmonious Landscape is one of the protected areas in the northern of Madagascar. It’s a dry deciduous forest with short thicket and rupicolous vegetation which is home to endemic species. The site faces many threats such as extensive conversion of forest trees to charcoal, slash-and-burn agriculture and lemur’s hunting.

These protected areas provide local communities with crucial ecosystem services such as water flows and water quality; conserving habitats that maintain feeding and breeding areas for fisheries; reducing land degradation, bees pollinate flowers and carbon storage. Moreover, local communities are engaging in ecotourism industries in the regions. In the meantime, such protected areas contribute to storing and capturing greenhouse gas. Therefore, these areas help people adapt to climate change.

However, these protected areas face many anthropogenic threats such as illegal logging of precious wood species, hunting and poaching of endangered lemurs, land conversion to produce charcoal, artisanal mining, encroachment, fire, etc. Therefore, the Rainforests of Atsinanana have been included in the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2010, and the Montagne des Français Protected Harmonious Landscape  is also experiencing such severe threats.

To conserve the Outstanding Universal Value of the World Heritage property and safeguard Montagne des Français Protected Harmonious Landscape, UNESCO launched a BIOCOM project on Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Natural Resource Management for Integrated Community Development in National Parks of Madagascar, funded by Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). The project is for 52 months in 2020-2024.