#saphires

Queen Diamond --for Toya

You twinkle in the dark

Shines like the

Glint of the suns fury.

Admist coal and dirt

You sit high amongst

The others -- rubies, sapphires, emeralds

Perfection, child

Like the glint

Takes millenia to form

A diamond in the rough

Jagged edge become

Smooth mirrors

These prisms of light

Take pressure

And you queen

Reign high

On your throne,

Excerpt from this National Geographic article:

A hundred million dollars’ worth of sapphires and other gems were smuggled out of Madagascar in 1999 alone, according to the World Bank. (This remains the most reliable study; recent estimates suggest the value today is about $150 million a year.) Most of the gem mining is done illegally in reserves, says Christoph Schwitzer, co-vice chair of the Madagascar primate specialist group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organization that sets the conservation status of animals and plants. The CAZ and other reserves, he says, “don’t receive anywhere near adequate protection on the ground.”

Madagascar has the third-highest rate of biodiversity on Earth, after Brazil and Indonesia. Eight of every 10 of its plants and animals are endemic. It has 300 species of reptiles and 300 of amphibians, 99 percent of them found nowhere else. Chameleons: 62 species. And along with the nearby Comoro Islands, Madagascar is the only place on the planet that’s home to wild lemurs—fully 113 species, the newest identified just last year.

The charismatic animals are a magnet for roughly 250,000 visitors a year who directly account for more than 6 percent of the country’s GDP and 5 percent of its jobs. Yet nearly all the lemur species are endangered—38, including indris, critically—and 17 have already gone extinct. Now conservationists and primatologists are gravely concerned about the effects of gem mining on remaining lemur habitat, as much as 90 percent of which has been lost to tree clearing and human incursion.

“Gems mining can be a significant driver of habitat loss,” Schwitzer says. “It can break a protected area relatively quickly.”

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