Malawi - iNaturalist World Tour
Malawi is the 95th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. The top observer is @marcoschmidtffm who researches african plants and has observations from up and down Malawi. The second top observer is @nanofishology with lots of observations around Liwonde National Park in the southern part of the country. Many of the top observers have observations based here, many in parks like Liwonde National Park, Majete Wildlife Reserve, Mulanje Mountain Forest Reserve, and Lengwe National Park including @markusgmeiner, @rguinness, @lemoncul and also @sethmusker, @tapaculo99 and @chinga. @martingrimm formerly based in Tanzania, has many observations along the border with Tanzania on the shores of Lake Malawi. @joachim and @michaelheuchert also have observations clustered in the northern half of the country.
The graph of observations per month is dominated by two peaks in December of 2017 driven by @nanofishology and in May of 2019 driven by @marcoschmidtffm and @rguinness
The top identifiers are our usual African continent identification superstars. The top identifier is @jakob who also leads in mammal IDs, @johnnybirder leads in birds, and @cabintom in insects. @calebcam leads in herp IDs and @sdressler in plant IDs. @alanhorstmann and @simontonge are also top identifiers in Malawi.
What can we do to get more people in Malawi using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.
@marcoschmidtffm @nanofishology @markusgmeiner @rguinness @martingrimm @jakob @johnnybirder @alanhorstmann @cabintom @simontonge
We’ll be back tomorrow in the Bahamas!
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Congrats to @marcoschmidtffm for de-throning me! Betcha can't tell when I went on vacation, eh? Absolutely beautiful country, highly recommended place to visit. The guides at Mvuu Camp in Liwonde National Park are skilled naturalists, if you're going to visit the park, that's the place to stay. David and Sam were our primary guides, and they were wonderful. David recounted coming across a Pangolin, but the people he was driving around only were interested in the big game animals (?!?!?!?!).
They have a lack of technology, and much of the country doesn't have electricity, or if it does, they have regular power outages which they blame on the invasive water hyacinths clogging up they hydroelectic power plants. Mvuu Camp has a generator, which runs their Wifi (so they do have internet!) but it's only on for a couple hours a day. I'm sure the guides in the park would be ALL OVER iNaturalist, except getting devices that can take good quality photographs and upload them into the country is difficult. The mail service is a challenge.
The best way to get Malawi on iNat? Get iNatters to Mvuu Camp (or other hotspots with dedicated naturalists with access to internet), and bring them old smart phones and wifi cameras to donate to the guides. I was helping Sam set up an iPhone he got from Germany (trying to change the settings so it would work in Malawi!), and it was too outdated to load the iNat app onto it (I tried!). He would have used it!
Would love to visit Malawi!! Quite a few places on the bucket list ....
@nanofishology is right about the technology and electricity, but neglects to mention that outside of the lodges data costs an arm and a leg.
I used to work school hols with Wululani Banda a Malawian in Zim, one of the most exceptional field naturalists I have ever been with.
Ah, @tonyrebelo I was on airplane mode the ENTIRE TIME I was in the country, I didn't even want to know how much it would end up costing! That's why I was suggesting getting devices to people who had reliable access to wifi (or even more traditional internet).
We have just returned from Malawi and had as only means of communication our cell phones with us. My friend read your comments about internet cost and replied to me (she is not on iNat):
"Please explain to them that internet data costs mk3500 for 100mb (Airtel) which lasted me a month. Not expensive at all, Also that skyband has free 50mb Facebook time every day"
Thanks. That is very nice to know.
Now how can we costs down in South Africa?
Using iNat can easily bump up your data needs, especially if your phone is your only internet access. In the US, before I started paying for a separate home internet line (I just used my phone's data for everything), I easily needed over 30 GB a month. Granted, communication modes vary quite widely across countries and cultures, so comparing the US to Malawi isn't quite relevant. But I don't know how far 100mb will go for regular iNat usage on top of whatever other data needs somebody might have.
Thanks @nanofishology
Africa is obviously not yet as connected as the US. I take my pictures home to my computer and reduce their size by cropping and recalculating to 1024 x 768 pix, this gives me pictures which so far have been good enough for ID in the region of 300k per picture. Our speeds, capacities and prices away from the bigger towns in ZA are such that this little extra work is paying off, specially loading observations on a 2Mb line shaped to at times less than half the speed.
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