While noting that there may come a day when lemurs on Necker Island are relocated to Madagascar; Sir Richard Branson has suggested that the Virgin Islands will continue to be the second home of lemurs permanently. Photo: Virgin.com

Sir Richard Branson has received much criticism ever since he decided to make Necker Island a place of refuge for the endangered species and spoke of plans to have a breeding programme on Moskito Island. Photo: VINO/File

Mr Branson has received much criticism ever since he decided to make Necker Island a place of refuge for the endangered species and spoke of plans to have a breeding programme on Moskito Island.

Despite all the criticism both from within the Virgin Islands and internationally, Mr Branson went ahead ahead with his plans and even brought in a number of lemurs from a private zoo in England, which he said, was finding breeding lemurs quite difficult due to a lack of space.

“I am passionate about any species that are disappearing in the world...the tigers in India are disappearing, the sharks are being slaughtered, one and a half million a week for their fins, just for the soup...the rhino is being slaughtered, the elephants for their tusks and the lemurs are slightly the most endangered species on earth because in Madagascar their habitat has disappeared,” Mr Branson said during an interview with Paul ‘Gadiethz’ Peart, on the Morning Ride Show on March 25, 2013.

Mr Branson said there are some 7 lemur species currently on Necker Island. “They are breeding well...there were one and two articles that got it wrong before they came saying that they ate lizards etcetera, they are purely vegetarian, they love fruits and vegetables...We were very pleased this week that we had our first twin lemurs born...”

He also said the lemurs were very fund of tambarinds and that the process of planting lots of tambarind trees on the island has begun “so they could be self sufficient.”

Asked if they lemurs would eventually be taken back to Madagascar, Mr Branson said “I don’t think the people would want to let the lemurs go now that they are here. If one day we can build a... park and one day Madagascar gets a Government they deserve, which protects the rainforest, then they would start re-introducing some of the babies in the years to come.”

Meanwhile, Mr Branson continues to take much flak from conservation experts over his planned lemur breeding programme for Moskito Island.

Reuters recently published an article where a conservation expert said Mr Branson’s apparently well-intentioned plan could be an ecological disaster.

"I do think it's a bad idea ... we have experience over and over and over again that when you transplant organisms from one part of the Earth to another part of the Earth the results are usually bad," Reuters quoted Anne D. Yoder, a lemur expert and director of the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, as saying to them.

She said that Branson, instead of trying to set up a new island home for the lemurs on Moskito, would do better to donate resources to trying to protect and preserve their natural but severely endangered habitat on Madagascar.

"Everything in Madagascar is pretty unique to Madagascar, so there are no parallel universes on planet Earth ... that's part of the problem. That's why the solutions need to be implemented in Madagascar not in other places," Yoder further told Reuters.

“She said she understood that Mr Branson, like conservationists around the world, was probably feeling "desperation" to try to help the endangered lemurs, but she believed his resettlement plan was not the answer,” Reuters stated.

“What we are trying to do is to get them from the zoos where they are not breeding because they do not have enough space, give them some space and set up a breeding programme so that future generations will be able to see these beautiful creatures and make sure they don’t disappear from the earth, Mr Branson told the Morning Ride Show.