HOORC monitoring training for Namibia and Angola

Trainees making a vegetation transect in southern Angola

HOORC's Professor Susan Ringrose and Dr Cornelis Vanderpost just returned from teaching a group of project participants from Angola, Namibia and Botswana in a course Tree Identification, Vegetation Assessment and Mammal Monitoring in Divundu, Namibia, between 18 and 23rd March. The course included fieldwork training for satellite-based vegetation mapping for the Mucusso Coutado in Angola, formerly a protected area that Angolans are now interested in restoring. The training was a component of the USAID funded Okavango Integrated River Basin Management Project. Fieldwork took place in Namibia and in landmine free portions of the Mucusso area in Angola, immediately across the border from Namibia. Angolan trainees from the Mucusso area, some Portuguese speaking and some Timbukushu speaking, are to carry out extensive vegetation fieldwork in the 28,000 square kilometre Coutado for a vegetation map that will form an input to the proposed management plan for the resurrected Mucusso protected area.