Madagascar

A trip included vists to three protected area systems: Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, Ranomafana National Park, and Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve. At each location, we had arranged meetings with partners and stakeholders in conservation.

In August 2022, I co-organized a week-long workshop for Madagascar National Parks to develop data management, analysis, and visualization skills, pertaining to the database of vertebrate observations for the 43 terrestrial protected areas across Madagascar. In total there were 37 participants, collectively representing all 43 terrestrial protected areas in Madagascar (some park directorial staff oversee multiple protected areas). The workshop was held in the Ambatobe office headquarters in Antananarivo, Madagascar. The majority of analytical lessons in this workshop were taught in Excel, which was a moderately familiar platform to most workshop attendees, but not fully incorporated or leveraged in data management procedures. Furthermore, prior to the main workshop activities (over five days), we also led two days of focused training on data curation and visualization in R for a smaller group of six participants, and also led an overview and introduction to R for the main workshop group.