SABAP2 - Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project

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Our Story

SABAP2 (http://sabap2.adu.org.za) is the Second Southern African Bird Atlas Project. It started in July 2007, so it is in its seventh year. To date, over 1000 citizen scientists (SABAP2 atlasers) have collected five million records of bird distribution from more than 12000 pentads. More than two-thirds of the pentads in the SABAP2 region have data. One of the SABAP2 objectives is to see how the distributions of the bird species occurring in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland have changed over the past two decades, since SABAP1 completed fieldwork in 1991. Namibia officially adopted the SABAP2 protocol in May 2012, and Zimbabwe in February 2013. The project, however, happily curates atlas data from all over Africa. The value of SABAP2 is starting to become crystal clear. The project is mapping bird distributions on a more accurate scale than ever before. It is becoming clear that a large number of species are in the process of changing their ranges, and doing this pretty quickly. Some species are expanding ranges, but sadly there are more with contracting ranges. The vision at the moment is change the paradigm, and to think of SABAP2 as providing us with a movie of bird distribution, one frame per year. In 2012, we initiated SABAP2012, with the objective of seeing how much of the atlas area we could cover in a single year. The answer: an awesome 31%. Currently, SABAP2013 is on the go, and we would like to achieve at least that level of coverage again. We need every birder in South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia and Zimbabwe on board to help us achieve our vision. Details on the website (http://sabap2.adu.org.za). SABAP2 is a partnership between the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at UCT, SANBI and BirdLife South Africa.

Keen to stay in touch? Contact us via our website (http://sabap2.adu.org.za) or on Twitter @SA_birdatlas.

Check out our YouTube channel for more cool material: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9K1EheBEeXSRqJZRP04XxA/featured?view_as=public