Conservation Issues
The diademed sifaka is classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. As of the year 2002, population estimates for the species range between 6,000 and 10,000 individuals. The primary threat is habitat reduction due to shifting cultivation by native peoples. This threat is also present even within designated national parks, which are sufficiently distant from the center of government, that enforcement of existing national laws protecting P. diadema habitat is problematic. Pressures of overpopulation in central and eastern Madagascar are causing many of the rural poor to seek subsistence by seizing whatever forest lands are available and undertaking slash-and-burn tactics as their initial step in a shifting cultivation system. Returns from such land use are usually meager, yielding small amounts of charcoal, firewood or grass crop for grazing of zebu.
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