Ethiopia - iNaturalist World Tour
Ethiopia is the 98th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour and the last stop on Week 14. All 10 of the top observers are clustered around the capital of Addis Ababa and areas nearby such as Bale Mountains National Park, this includes @kerejoo, @markuslilje, @hdemann, @zdufran, @wildchroma, @woodridgejeff, @nikborrow, @tiluchi, @neomorphus, and @khenderson. Only a handful of top observers such as @paolaferruzzi are clustered elsewhere such as the city of Gondar to the north.. You can read more about Bale Mountains National Park in this Observation of the Week post featuring an observation by @veronika_johansson.
The number of observatioins per month has been slowy increasing since 2017.
@jakob is the top identifier and leads in mammals. @johnnybirder leads in birds @lera who is involved in the Plants of Ethiopia NatureMap project leads in plant IDs and @cabintom leads in insect IDs. @ldacosta, @john8, @rjq are also top identifiers in Ethiopia.
What can we do to get more people in Ethiopia using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.
@kerejoo @markuslilje@hdemann @zdufran @wildchroma @jakob @johnnybirder @ldacosta @john8 @rjq
We’ll be back tomorrow in Cambodia!
Comments
I do not think I have seen such a concentration of observers in a single area. This can not be to the benefit for the nature of the country, particularly as Ethiopia has such a diverse range of environments .
As far as getting more people in Ethiopia involved, I think we would need to reach out to university students in Ethiopia. It might also be good to reach out to the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute in Addis Ababa. It is located next to the British, Belgian, and Kenyan embassies.
There are some eco lodges and birding tours conducted throughout the country, but I’m not sure what the best way is to get the word out to people staying at those places or going on those tours.
As far as geographic distribution goes, I think it will be difficult to fill in the gaps in the map because Ethiopia is sparsely populated outside of the cities and the rural areas are mostly farmers and pastoralists living simple lives (no electricity, cell phones, etc.) I would venture to guess that the vast majority of iNat observations in Ethiopia are by people visiting the country. I think the best way to fill in the geographic gaps would be to get more Ethiopians involved. But even then, I think those will mostly be clustered in the capital and other large cities.
I don’t have plans to go back to Ethiopia for a few more years, but when I do, I would be happy to try to reach out to some different people and take some iNat post cards with me.
The real hero for flowering plant ids in Ethiopia is @marcoschmidtffm , who has also shared an African plants photo guide (see https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flowering-plants-of-ethiopia/journal/). I have only been assigning very high level ids, except for one or two species.
There are about 150 observations that are tagged as having flowers, fruit or buds but haven't got to research grade yet. Any help welcomed! (Also see journal link).
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