The European Mammal Foundation
The Societas Europaea Mammalogica was set up to support the first edition of the Atlas by providing a formal organisation and a bank account. This was registered in Paris under French law. Since that time, the SEM has ceased to exist officially, so for the second edition of the Atlas, we have set up a new organisation to provide similar facilities. The European Mammal Foundation is registered as a charitable Foundation (Stichting) in the Netherlands and has the objective of publishing and keeping up to date an atlas and related products with all information about European mammals. It can thus be used to help with fund-raising for the Atlas project. At present, the Foundation has 4 officers:
- Chair: Tony Mitchell-Jones
- Vice-chair: Johan Thissen
- Secretary: Laurent Schley
- Treasurer: Svetlana Miteva
EMMA2 - 1 year on
A year after our initial meeting in Rome the project has made good progress and is on-track with the timetable we proposed there.
The main achievements this year have been:
- We have agreed the exact boundaries of the area to be mapped and prepared maps of the CGRS cells for each country (available here).
- We have agreed a full species list for the area, annotated with cases where taxonomic decisions may need to be made as the project moves forward. We recognise that changes may need to be considered during the lifetime of the project and have set up a system for doing this,
- We have appointed coordinators for almost every country involved in the project, as well as a small number of topic coordinators to help with the work (available here).
For 2018, we are planning an opportunity for all our coordinators to get together and discuss topics relating to the collection, management and storage of data for the atlas. We will also be opening discussions with a publisher to begin the process of planning the publication and we will also start looking for authors to prepare the species accounts.
EMMA2 - Meeting in Prague
Photo: G Amori
47 members of the Delivery Group, from 30 European countries, gathered in Prague on the weekend of 20-22 April for the first full meeting of the project group. Delegates listened to a variety of presentations, including case studies of atlas work across Europe, data sharing, setting standards for data collection and management, progress reports from each country and information about the data requirements for the atlas.
An impressive amount of work is already under way and there was great enthusiasm for this ambitious project, which has already led to the setting up of several national atlas projects.
Mammifères Sauvages du Maroc
Wild Mammals of Morocco: Populations, Distribution and Ecology, edited by S. Aulagnier, F. Cuzin and M. Thévenot, has recently been published by the Société Française pour l'Etude et la Protection des Mammifères. The work includes distribution maps for all species recorded in the second half of the 20th century, as well as data on their taxonomy, vernacular names and ecology. More details about the publication and where to buy it can be found here.
EMMA2 - Rome meeting
Photo: Mustafa Sözen
The first meeting to discuss the 2nd edition of the Atlas of European Mammals (EMMA2) was held in Rome on 25026 November 2016. 33 people from 21 countries attended, though 2 were not present for this photo on Saturday morning.
The agenda, notes and report of the meeting can be downloaded by following the menu EMMA2>Documents.