On the 17th of June, 35 young, passionate conservationists from 7 West and Central African countries gathered online to kick off a 2-year conservation and species conservation planning training program organized by JRS grantee THRESCOAL and its partner, Project Mecistops. The goal of the training is to significantly build  capacity in rigorous scientific approaches, supporting the conservation of underrepresented species like pangolins, crocodiles, and freshwater fish.

The first virtual training workshop on June 23-24 focused on modeling species distribution using the Wallace EcoMod platform. The THRESCOAL and Project Mecistops team worked with developers to deliver the training simultaneously in French and English.  Participants worked through the theory of species distributions, types of distribution modeling, key considerations for study design, and a step-by-step overview and procedure for using the Wallace model of species distributions. Participants had the opportunity to develop their own models from their existing data. THRESCOAL aims to integrate these motivated participants into existing networks of conservation scientists that work on under-represented species both regionally and globally where they will enhance efforts to plan for and implement species conservation.