The association
What the conservation fee actually pays for
Salaries, paths, water, seedlings, and a quarterly account posted where everyone can read it.
Bakoly Randrianasolo
Secretary, site association
· 4 min read
Every visitor pays a conservation fee at the gate. People reasonably want to know where it goes, so here is the answer without the brochure language.
Salaries first
Thirty-one people from Sadjoavato are on the payroll: guides, cooks, drivers, two path wardens and the team that runs the camp. That is the largest line by a distance.
Then the ground itself
Path maintenance, the washblock, the water filtration drums, and the barriers that keep vehicles off the north rim. Sand moves; someone has to move it back.
Then the slopes
Four thousand two hundred trees have gone into the eroded slopes above the canyon since 2021. Not all of them survived. The ones that did are slowing the runoff that is taking the plateau apart.
The accounts go up at the gate every quarter, on paper, in Malagasy and French. Anyone can read them.
What it does not pay for
It does not pay for the restaurant, the tents or the vehicles. Those are commercial and stand on their own. Keeping the two separate is the only way the figures mean anything.
