Turnbull decided that something had to be done to highlight the importance of some of Africa’s forgotten wilderness areas.
‘The Sudd, where the White Nile flows into Southern Sudan is a classic example,’ he says. ‘It’s migration is almost certainly bigger than that of the Serengeti-Mara, and it crosses the greatest swamp in the world. Now, plans to resume construction of the controversial Jonglei Canal threaten to drain extensive areas of this ecological treasure. Whatever the pros and cons of the project, the point is this – if the Sudd disappeared tomorrow, hardly anyone would know that one of the last and greatest wildernesses on earth had been bled dry. It seemed to me that a light needs to be shone on these unique places before we let them go.’
Turnbull enlisted the help of Tracks 4 Africa, an organisation that produces maps for GPS, but it was when Google Earth became involved that the project really began to pick up momentum.
Soon Mapa had as many as six teams of explorers mapping and documenting remote wilderness areas and the data collected has already been used to build the most accurate and extensive environmental layer ever produced. Turnbull and his team are painting what he calls a ‘conservation landscape’ for the entire continent onto the Google Earth canvas.
I had flown to Rwanda with photographer Eric Nathan and our task now was to drive north to help put 14 of Uganda’s national parks and reserves more firmly on the map.
Some of the parks did not allow access by vehicles so we began by trekking some of the trails in Mgahinga National Park. We mapped trails on the northern flank of the great volcanoes that dropped down on the opposite side into Rwanda and to the west into Congo. Our route followed what park rangers believed to be the Ugandan side of the border, but our GPS unmistakably showed that we, along with our armed rangers, were already well inside the mysterious DRC.
Later, in the beautiful Kidepo National Park, in Uganda’s far north, we again followed the rangers’ directions to the border. It was a line that had been disputed by Idi Amin (who was in the process of building himself a luxury lodge – some say ‘bunker’ would be a more apt term – near here when he was finally ousted).
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