Empowering Local community - GIS in Egypt: Case study for use Google Earth as community based-conservation tool in Gabel Elba Protected Area (GEPA), Egypt

Conserving mountain biodiversity and its indigenous tribe’s cultural diversity is hard mission especially when combine with community’s seeking for modern technologies especially their new generation which they has been lost their traditional knowledge on seeking more new easiest technologies and at end they lost the last rapport with their mother land. And depending on this there is urgent need for combining the TK and mapping technologies for more linking the communities with their biodiversity. For that we worked with the indigenous tribes in Elba Mountain protected area on focus on the globally endangered Dracaena ombet tree in Gabel Elba, which their subpopulations on Gabel Elba in Egypt are particularly threatened and there is urgent need for conservation initiative for D.ombet in Egypt, because a lack of data about the population status has made it impossible to carry out effective conservation activities for D.ombet in GEPA, this to integrated and combining their TK about the endangered Dracaena ombet with the modern technologies mapping, now in GE we have many community members can using Google Earth, global positioning system (GPS) and other mapping and tracking technologies to monitor and protect their endangered tree D.ombet combining and linking with their traditional knowledge of the mountains, which as results for this 12 populations we rediscovered and their conservation action plan preparing for more ongoing conservation action. This initiative supported and funded by CLP as part of the future conservation award which directed towards the Dracaena Monitoring and Assessment Project in GEPA.