For the purposes of this project, a protected area is somewhere that has been formally granted some sort of protection because of its ecological value.

National Parks are the best known type of protected area but there are other types as well.

Protected areas come in all shapes and sizes. MAPA has committed itself to plotting just over 1,000 of them, ranging in size from 5 to over 5 million hectares.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) and others have collaborated over many years to create the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) – an incredible resource. This database has adopted grading standards and naming conventions that try to list protected areas in a consistent and informative way. This is not easy and not all the standards have been adopted by all countries. Nonetheless, it is a massive and important body of work, and the key resource for choosing the 1,000 African protected areas that we are mapping.

The most commonly visited protected areas are National Parks. National Park is a term used by the IUCN / WDPA, as well as by local wildlife authorities, to describe a reserve which is ecologically important and open to visitors, making it it economically important as well.

There are about 350 national parks in the 1,000 protected areas that MAPA has set out to map and in many ways they make up the core of protected area network in Africa. These are going to be the easiest to map and we have quite a lot of data for national parks in Southern and East Africa already, with more coming in every month.

However, and for various reasons, there are many important parks which are not classified as national parks . One of the most famous of all of Africa’s reserves, the Masai Mara is not a national park because it is not owned by the Kenyan nation (it is owned by the Maasai peoples). So the list of protected areas to be mapped by MAPA is longer than the list of national parks.

In fact, the list of MAPA parks includes all those protected areas in Africa which are listed by the IUCN as Category Ia, Ib, II and IV. These categories are explained below in the IUCN’s own words.

Categories III (national monuments, etc), V and VI (significantly transformed and peopled areas) have not generally been included, though there are exceptions.

IUCN Definitions Categories Ia, Ib, II & IV
Areas of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means.

Category Ia: Strict nature reserve/wilderness protection area managed mainly for science or wilderness protection – an area of land and/or sea possessing some outstanding or representative ecosystems, geological or physiological features and/or species, available primarily for scientific research and/or environmental monitoring.

Category Ib: Wilderness area: protected area managed mainly for wilderness protection – large area of unmodified or slightly modified land and/or sea, retaining its natural characteristics and influence, without permanent or significant habitation, which is protected and managed to preserve its natural condition.

Category II: National park: protected area managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation – natural area of land and/or sea designated to (a) protect the ecological integrity of one or more ecosystems for present and future generations, (b) exclude exploitation or occupation inimical to the purposes of designation of the area and (c) provide a foundation for spiritual, scientific, educational, recreational and visitor opportunities, all of which must be environmentally and culturally compatible.

Category IV: Habitat/Species Management Area: protected area managed mainly for conservation through management intervention – area of land and/or sea subject to active intervention for management purposes so as to ensure the maintenance of habitats to meet the requirements of specific species.

Even these wide definitions give problems. Perhaps the biggest large mammal migration on the continent takes place not in the Mara-Serengeti complex, but in the swampy Sudd of southern Sudan – and there is no formally protected area there at all.

The intention of the MAPA project is to make Africa’s conservation areas more visible and accessible to the wider world. We will gladly try to include further areas in the project if it will help further those aims.

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