Anyone who wants to be!

March Turnbull is an environmental journalist and overlander who, for years, has been crusading for a single online home for useful information about all of Africa’s protected areas.

The MAPA project has grown out of one very tricky aspect of that mission – to accurately map the protected areas. Gathering all the ecological, economic and travel information is a vast exercise but not very complicated technically. However, we couldn’t plot the protected area maps properly until we linked up with Tracks4Africa, publishers of overland maps for GPS units.

With the help of Google, we are able to present all of Africa’s protected areas on Google Earth as one dataset.  Go online, look at an obscure park.  Give us time and we will show you all the  access roads, the waterholes, the campsites and everything else that might encourage travellers and commentators to cast their eye over Africa’s hidden gems.

The Google Earth layer has been  available  since October 2009.  It doesn’t yet include the whole dataset because there is a mega-amount of work that needs to be done before GPS maps can be turned into interactive web content, but we will get there.

So the team is:

March Turnbull, Director and the man who answers the phone.

Johan Groenewald, Director of Tracks4 Africa and a Director of the MAPA Project.

There are basically two sides to the Project -

• The mapping side.  This includes field work all over Africa and the processing of all map data in the Tracks4Africa lab in Stellenbosch.  March and Johann manage that.
• The ‘rich content’ side.   This is the stuff that makes the Google Earth layer accurate and interesting.

Alta de Vos manages all the rich content.  She is a zoologist who has recently finished her Doctorate at the University of Cape Town. Her particular interest is Angola where she mapped for MAPA in February 2009 and is going again in July 2010

Kath Potgieter is also a zoologist, and she researches protected areas for MAPA.  It  is her job to decide what should be included in the Google Earth descriptions of parks and reserves.  This is a difficult job and Kath is brilliant at it.

Peter Levey, engineer and adventurer, does all the quality control of the rich content.  He edits everything posted on the Google Earth layer, sources photos, checks facts, and fleshes out any entries that do not do justice to the subject matter.  We tried running the layer without an editor; it was stressful and plagued by mistakes.  Peter has changed all of that.   He has also mapped one of the toughest legs in East Africa for MAPA.

Google are also an essential part of the team.   Special thanks to Julie Sohn at Google Inc. and everyone at Google Outreach, especially Sean Askay the ever-patient technical alchemist.

Craig von Hagen who has been so generous with his time, knowledge and contacts, particularly in Kenya where it all started

Craig von Hagen with Tom Sipul, Director of Planning Kenya Wildlife Services

Of course the most important ingredient for Phase 1 of the project (Southern and East Africa) have been the volunteers who have done the work on the ground.Everyone in the T4A offices in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and especially Wouter and Bessie Brand, Josh Gericke and Erick Ndava.

• Volunteers driving in the field, getting bitten by things, contracting malaria, mending vehicles with wire and string and mostly having a lot of fun
  • Peter Levey (Western Tanzania)
  • Tim Funkenberg (Zambia)
  • Andrea Hefcyk (Zambia)
  • Pierre Radley (Northern Zimbabwe)
  • Willem Coetsee (Northern Zimbabwe)
  • Andy Welch (Zambia)
  • Geoff Hughes (Zambia)
  • Keith and Marie Stephenson (Mozambique)
  • Nicky Bosman (South Africa)
  • Gary and Warren Smart (Malawi)
  • Eddie and Marie von Bargen (Malawi)
  • Garth and Gail Diers (Southern Tanzania)
  • Eggie and Hester Scheffler (Southern Tanzania)
  • Wessel Janse van Rensburg (Eastern Tanzania)
  • Renier Swart (eastern Tanzania)
  • Dick and Caretha Randall (northern Ethiopia)
  • Simon Clark (southern Ethiopia)
  • Simon Orford (southern Ethiopia)
  • Taryn Mitchell (Uganda and southern Ethiopia)
  • Deon de Jongh (Uganda and southern Ethiopia)
  • Alta de Vos (southern Angola)
  • Andrew Thurlow (southern Angola)
  • Richard Hugo (southern Angola)
  • Charlie Turnbull (western Tanzania)
  • Andrew Riddel (western Tanzania)
  • Ronny Otitz  (Kenya)
  • Paolo Paron (Kenya)
  • Bob Moore (Kenya)
  • Craig von Hagen (Kenya)
  • Karl Keppke (Kenya)
  • Alex Rhys-Hurn (Kenya)
  • Ben Piper (Kenya)
  • Bruce Hillier (Kenya)
  • Filippo Dibari (Kenya)
  • Michiel van Hassalt (Kenya)
  • Teeku Patel (Kenya)
  • And many more!!

However, we need anyone and everyone to send us data to complete this inventory of Africa’s priceless and special places, especially the less travelled ones.

If you have any existing data, or if you plan to go near any game reserves in the near future, you are officially elected onto the team….. Even one or two good waypoints are useful.

Bring us your data, help preserve the future of our wildlife. Oh, and your tracks and waypoints will end up on Google Earth. Very Cool.

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