When we first started building the database, we thought that we had made it pretty easy for conservationists to add their projects…but not everyone agreed. Thanks to your comments, we realized that it wasn’t all that intuitive to navigate around the database, and that not having automatic registration was slowing people down. Furthermore, once you added your project, you had to wait for us to activate it before you could edit it again.

We are very pleased to announce that those problems are now a thing of the past. Here are some changes that you can expect to see:

Automatic Registration

In the past you’ve had to email us for a username and password. You can now do this automatically (here), enabling you to log in immediately to add your project record.

See your own content

One problem we ran into fairly soon was that it was difficult to find your own content in between everyone else’s on the database. Now when you log in you’ll be taken to your contributions (see below). You can still associate wildlife species, organizations, videos, articles and blogs added by other people. We are working on making it easier to find content amongst this content too.

Add videos, wildlife, footprints, articles and organizations easily

To add rich content (like videos) to your bubble you had to log out of your record and go to the listing of that content type, before returning to your project record to associate it. You now no longer have to log out of your record, and can move easily between the different tabs to add wildlife species, articles, footprints, videos and organizations to your project bubble.

New activation routine

To make sure that we only get conservation added to the layer, we set up the database  so that every record added needed to be authorized by an administrator before appearing on Google Earth. The problem was that one a project was added, it would disappear to the user until activated by an administrator.  In creating the “my contributions” page, we have done away with this step from a user’s point of view. Your project won’t appear on the “live layer” (this is not up yet, but will be very soon) until activated by an administrator, but you can edit your content as much as you like.

More help material

In an attempt to make the database more user-friendly, we have embedded instructions in the database itself. We hope that this will make it possible for people to quickly and easily create their bubbles without having to read through tedious instructions. We do appreciate that instructions may still be useful, though, so we have made a revised PDF document and a slideshow available to you on this website.

We hope that you find these changes helpful! Please let us know what you like and don’t like about the new-look database, and feel free to suggest other ways in which we can make it easier for third parties to add projects.  We have plenty in store for the database, the layer and the website over the next few months, and we’ll keep you updated as to those developments. More news soon!

• Leave a comment... (0)

As we mentioned in our newsletter a few weeks ago,  we’re committed to having accurate information on protected areas on the MAPA  Google Earth layer.  Phase one of the project saw many volunteers visiting protected areas in southern and east Africa, and as such we got a little bit of a feel for areas that we were writing about for the layer. Even so, we still got some information wrong, and some protected areas are not as well represented as they should be.  For phase two, we are doing things the other way around: we’re starting with the desktop research and will be following with the on-the-ground mapping, thus providing an even larger initial window for errors to creep in.

The only way that protected areas will be well-represented across Africa is if the stories of these areas are told by people who really know them. A case in point: a few weeks ago we received an email from Dr. Colleen Begg from the Niassa Carnivore project. The Beggs have gone out of their way to add their information on the MAPA layer, despite having very limited internet access. Upon reviewing the information on the MAPA layer,  Dr. Begg immediately noticed some errors on the Niassa National Reserve bubble.  These errors will hopefully be corrected, preferably by staff of the Niassa National Reserve when we publish the next version of the layer.

This post is specifically directed at people like Dr. Begg:  researchers and conservationists actively doing research in parks, park managers, rangers – we’re looking for 3rd party guardians for the protected areas on the layer. People who can adopt an area they know inside out and who can ensure that they are really well represented on the layer.  It doesn’t require a lot of work and will ensure that the MAPA layer moves one step closer to telling the story of conservation in Africa. If you know such a person, or are such a person, please contact us.

Chimanimani National Reserve, Mozambique: Can you help us improve this information?

If you are a phase one volunteer, please have a look at the protected areas that you visited and verify that we did it justice on the map. If you have any information to add, any extra or better pictures, any corrections, or can suggest good contacts to be 3rd party guardians, please get in contact.

• Leave a comment... (0)