John FW Herschel Gold Medal awarded to Atlas editors

The editors of The Atlas of Southern African Birds were awarded the John FW Herschell Medal of the Royal Society of South Africa. This medal is awarded for "contributions of science in southern Africa, especially of a multidisciplinary scientific nature". The citation, read at the presentation ceremony, held in August 2000, follows.

Citation for the John FW Herschel Medal

The Atlas of Southern African Birds is a two volume, 1700 page publication based on the Southern African Bird Atlas Project. It depicts, for the first time, the ranges of southern Africa's rich avifauna on distribution maps that are based entirely on actual observations.

The bird atlas project covered six countries in southern Africa over the politically turbulent period 1986 to 1997. In spite of an assortment of difficulties, the project triumphed to became the largest biodiversity project ever conducted on the continent of Africa, collecting seven million records of bird distribution.

The Atlas of Southern African Birds is the product of a huge team effort. Over 5000 people participated; for many of these observers it was their first experience of participating in a scientific project, in which data need to be collected according to a strict protocol. 62 scientists wrote species accounts.

The publication had seven editors. James Harrison coordinated the entire project from start to finish. David Allan devoted the greater part of three years collecting atlas data in the remotest parts of South Africa. Les Underhill developed most of the computational and statistical aspects of the project, and, as Director of the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town, was responsible for the overall management. Marc Herremans, Vincent Parker, Tony Tree and Chris Brown were primarily responsible for matters relating to Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Namibia, respectively, but all made enormous inputs into the entire atlas.

The atlas is widely regarded as a world leader in its genre of scientific publications, the bird atlas. It is therefore entirely appropriate that the Royal Society of South Africa awards the John FW Herschel medal to the team of editors of The Atlas of Southern African Birds