Now anybody can be a conservation scientist

Date: 06 February 2015 By: Andries van Zyl

To effectively manage and conserve wildlife, researchers need to know where they occur and understand why they’re there.

“But the reality is that across Africa, our knowledge of the whereabouts of many mammals is, at best, outdated and, at worst, based on unverified anecdotes. Filling this crucial gap in our knowledge is the main aim of MammalMAP – the African Mammal Atlas Project,” says Ms Megan Loftie-Eaton of MammalMAP.

Started in 2011, MammalMAP has been working towards one ambitious goal: To update the distribution maps for all of Africa’s wild mammals – the small ones, the big ones, those that fly and those that swim.

“We produce these maps using information that we gather in two ways. First, we collaborate with biologists, field rangers, conservation organizations and wildlife authorities that work across Africa, collecting information for particular species or particular areas. We integrate all of this biological data together into one database. But, of course, biologists can’t work everywhere, and they can’t study everything, so even databases full of biological information can be patchy in space, time, and species coverage. So, to augment this large database, we use our second method of gathering data: We harness the power of citizen scientists,” says Loftie-Eaton.

A citizen scientist is anyone who helps to gather information that is useful, in some way, to science. In their case, citizen scientists are people, young and old, who let them know what mammals they’ve seen around them at their homes, and on their holidays. “In fact, people who live across Africa, or those who explore Africa, can have a greater reach than biologists and conservation authorities and can spot and record a greater variety of mammal species across a much larger area. So, absolutely anyone, anywhere can help us to map Africa’s mammals,” says Loftie-Eaton.

By combining these records from both biologists and citizen scientists, MammalMAP is able to build more robust and more complete pictures of the 21st century distribution of African mammals. These maps in turn can have a powerful impact on conservation. “So grab your DSLR, your camera trap or your cell phone, and whenever you see an African mammal – big or small, living or road kill – snap a photograph of it, record the date and GPS co-ordinates, and then submit your record to the online MammalMAP virtual museum at http://vmus.adu.org.za/.  You can even use one of the clever and fun new Smart Phone Apps (like Africa: Live or Tracking the Wild) to record your mammal sightings,” says Loftie-Eaton.

Using these apps, you simply take a photograph of the African mammal you’ve spotted and the app takes care of everything else. For larger submissions (more than 20 photographs) you can email them at [email protected] and they will explain how you can send multiple photographs to them using an online file-transfer system. “The quality of the photographs is not important. What matters is that we can identify the mammal in the photo, and that we know where and when the photograph was taken,” says Loftie-Eaton. 

Viewed: 207

Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

More photos...