Wrapping up a second year Year Two of the BID: Biodiversity Information for Development programme is closing with lots of activity around each of its

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Wrapping up a second year

Year Two of the BID: Biodiversity Information for Development programme is closing with lots of activity around each of its three target regions of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The first 23 African projects funded are well along, engaging data publishers, stakeholders and local communities while starting to make the first BID-related datasets available for biodiversity-related research and policy (highlights below).

Meanwhile, finishing touches are going on agreements for more than a dozen more new projects in the Caribbean and Pacific. At the same time, Secretariat staff and external reviewers are also reviewing the results of the just-completed last call for proposals, which drew an astonishing response—more than 380 initial concept notes from organizations in Africa!

We expect to unveil the Caribbean and Pacific projects in May and the second and final round of African project grantees later this summer. Stay tuned!

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Programme overview

Data is not the only thing coming out of the initial BID projects in Africa nor, in most cases, the first. Projects like the African Insect Atlas have convened important local capacity building and training workshops in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and elsewhere across the continent.

The Angolan node of SASSCAL (the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management) is installing GBIF's open-source IPT software, preparing them to publish data from their own project and network.

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Binder with a paper record and associated specimen predator tooth from the archives of the Botswana Wildlife Management Association.

And the University of Botswana's Okavango Research Institute and Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks have earned local media attention for their efforts to rescue the records of the Botswana Wildlife Management Association, preserving an important information legacy following the country's suspension of commercial hunting in 2014.

But even at this early stage, data from BID's first African projects has started to narrow gaps in knowledge and information about species.

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Mobilizing data in BID Africa

Addressing health and food security priorities in Benin

This project led by GBIF Benin seeks to mobilize information about the country's medicinal and agroforestry plants to promote sustainable use and conservation of these species. Six datasets containing about one-quarter of a projected 59,000 occurrence records have already been published, drawing on knowledge not only from GBIF Benin but also from the national Ministry of Waters, Forests and Hunting, the NGO Rêve Développement, and two units of the University of Abomey-Calavi: the Laboratory of Forest Sciences and the Faculty of Science and Technology.
* Dataset: Census of medicinal plants of Benin
* Dataset: Census of medicinal and agroforestry plants of Benin
* Dataset (en français): Diversity and distribution of medicinal plants in Benin
* Dataset (en français): Diversity and distribution of agroforestry plants
* Dataset: Monitoring the dynamics of a medicinal tree species Haematostaphis barteri,
* Dataset (en français): An inventory of medicinal and agroforestry plant species in the forests of the Ouémé-Plateau department

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Project participants at Guinea's planning workshop for a national Red List of plants

Towards a Red List of the globally threatened plants of Guinea

The National Herbarium of Guinea's project aims to mobilize data about the country's plants contained in herbaria and literature and, by identifying Guinea’s most threatened species and key sites for their protection, to develop the first national Plant Red List programme in West Africa. In so doing, the project hopes to help fulfill Guinea's national biodiversity priorities and commitments connected to the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.
* Project website
* Dataset (en français): National Herbarium of Guinea
* Dataset (en français): Herbarium specimens collected by C.C.H. Jongkind in the Nimba Mountains in southeastern Guinea
* Dataset (en français): Field observations of medicinal plants used by traditional healers in the prefecture of Labé

Strengthening the biodiversity stakeholders network in Togo

Through hands-on training in data collection, management, cleaning and publication and with the help of mentors from the Belgian Biodiversity Platform and Canadensys, GBIF Togo's BID project expects to increase national network capacity for mobilizing primary biodiversity data from previously undigitized botanical and zoological collections. The first of more than 100,000 records have started appearing in these 23 checklists and three occurrence datasets:
* Dataset (en français): Census of migratory water birds in Togo
* Dataset (en français): Collection of the Laboratory of Applied Entomology, University of Lomé
* Dataset (en français): Medical potential of African plants

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Training workshop on data mobilization, Pendjari National Park, Tanguiéta

Mobilizing biodiversity data on protected areas and threatened species in Benin

The National Forest Office of Benin's project is increasing availability of data from protected areas like the W and Pendjari national parks and on threatened species, and 42 attendees have already benefitted from a trio of training workshops on data mobilization, data entry, quality and publishing.
* Dataset: Forest inventory in the Biosphere Reserve of W

Gathering of data on Benin's birds for sustainable management

A project led by the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at Benin's University of Abomey-Calavi has digitized 920 occurrences of birds observed during a February 2010 inventory inside the W and Pendjari parks by noted naturalists and authors Françoise Dowsett-Lemaire and J. Robert Dowsett.
* Dataset: Annotated list of observed birds in W and Pendjari Reserves in Benin, February 2010

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GBIF-2016

GBIF leads the Biodiversity Information for Development programme, or BID, a multi-year, €3.9 million programme funded by the European Union. The programme aims to increase the availability and use of biodiversity information in the ‘ACP’ nations of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

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This programme is funded by the European Union.

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