Email A cruel irony hangs over Madagascar, a massive island about 250 miles off the east coast of Africa. In this wonderland of biodiversity and bucket-list destination for travelers, the very thing that has defined it—isolation—could be its undoing. Nearly the size of Texas, and split off from the African mainland some 180 million years ago, this Indian Ocean island is a world apart. It’s the only place on the planet to find lemurs in the wild, and 90 percent of its plants and animals are endemic. In mid-March, Patricia Wright was in Madagascar, where the renowned primatologist travels six times a year, to oversee the transfer of a dozen greater bamboo lemurs from a rice field into the rain forest. Village farmers had grown agitated over the critically endangered creature eating their crop.