Toyota Outreach at iSimangaliso Wetland Park

The Toyota Enviro Outreach will start on October 7th at the University of Johannesburg and will run until October 18th, during which time we will visit the iSimangaliso Wetland Park (meaning miracle and wonder), which was listed as South Africa’s first World Heritage Site in December 1999. It is South Africa's third largest Park (332 000 hectare) and extends from Maphelane (Cape St. Lucia) in the South, to Kosi Bay in the North. It contains three major lake systems, eight interlinking ecosystems, 700 year old fishing traditions, most of South Africa’s remaining swamp forests, Africa’s largest estuarine system, and 25 000 year-old coastal dunes – among the highest in the world.

Our goal during the outreach is to collect specimens from a broad range of taxa and to produce DNA barcode records for all of them. These specimens and their sequences will become part of the growing reference library of DNA barcodes for South African plants and animals and is
intended for use by the broader scientific and amateur naturalist communities.