Furthermore, local communities can be negatively impacted. Local villagers have been threatened into silence or exploited for cheap, dangerous labor, and all of these activities within the forest often violate local taboos. With decades of illegal logging in Madagascar's protected areas it comes as little surprise that evidence of closely associated activities, such as slash-and-burn agriculture, tree cutting, honey extraction, and bushmeat hunting, were discovered in Marojejy National Park by a research team in 2008. With the recent political instability, these transgressions have increased in frequency and severity along with the illegal logging, and now threaten the existence of critically endangered lemurs and other species. This has done irreparable damage and jeopardized over thirty years of conservation work. The sheer size of the areas already affected during 2009 highlight the threats posed by illegal logging in Madagascar, particularly in the SAVA Region. The total areas impacted include between in Marojejy and northern Masoala, in Makira and in southern Masoala. To make matters worse, extensive forest clearing has been occurring around the parks' rivers. Since it takes four to five lighter trees (such as "Dombeya" species) to create a raft to float the much denser, heavier rosewood logs, loggers cut these lighter trees along the riverside first, causing erosion and silting of the streams and rivers. According to the EIA and Global Witness report, observations suggested at that 200 to 400 lighter trees were being cut per day to transport the rosewood. Lemurs and other endemic wildlife have become the target for poachers, a problem that has increased significantly since the large-scale illegal logging has commenced. Malagasy reptiles have long been a target of animal traders, but as smuggling of these species has intensified, now lemurs are also being collected and illegally exported for the exotic pet trade. Initially following the political upheaval, conservation organizations were concerned that lemurs and other wildlife would be hunted for food by the thousands of loggers living and working in the protected areas. This indeed has happened, although the scale of the damage is unknown. However, unlike the bushmeat problems in other tropical countries, the majority of the meat from illegal hunting has not gone to feeding the hungry, impoverished rural populations. Instead, a "luxury market" has developed in the larger towns, including the capital, Antananarivo. Around Makira, lemurs have been tracked using trained dogs, killed, smoked on-site, and sold to up-scale restaurants around the region.