Nature
Travel Specialists
nature
travel, wildlife tours, adventure travel and general travel to Australia,
Southeast Asia and South America
VOLUNTEER WILDLIFE & NATURE RESEARCH TRAVEL
Many people would like to do a little more and use
their time while traveling to assist the country they are visiting,
or would like to become more deeply involved with the things they
are seeing. This section is devoted to nature travel where you can
be more active in the country you are visiting than just observing
- not that there's anything wrong with that. Remember, your very presence
in an activity such as wildlife viewing, or visiting a National Park,
presents an economic benefit to the country or region involved, and
therefore encourages the preservation of the area.
But if you would like to get more down and dirty,
we seek out relevant research and volunteer wildlife and nature travel
opportunities and present them here. In some instances, we are actively
involved in the program, arranging volunteers or assistants for the
organization involved. With others we may simply offer to help with
the mechanics, such as air arrangements and additional activities
before or after the core activity. Lastly, we may just list connections
to some opportunities - for example to countries we don't operate
in, or completely self-contained opportunities, where the organization
either arranges everything itself, or has contracted with another
company to do so. Regardless, we're trying to get the information
out, as research & volunteer travel is a great way to help the
planet. In all cases if you wish to go direct, that's fine with us
- the idea is to help.
As we are primarily a natural history travel company,
that's the focus of our research and volunteer travel. However, many
of the connections will lead to sites with more general outlooks,
so if you've arrived here looking to help with and engineering project,
check out the links anyway. If you know of any volunteer or research
travel opportunities, or are responsible for such opportunities, please
email us with more information. We're
always looking add new opportunities.
Best as we try, we can't keep up with all the opportunities,
and some may not be operating by the time you read this. Please check
directly with the organizations for dates.
Volunteer travel tends to be cheaper, and the accommodations
more down scale. Research travel tends to be more expensive, although
the acommodation may or may not be nicer. With research travel you
are usually making a significant monetary contribution to the research
as well as a contibution of labor. Earthwatch
is probably the best known of the commercial research travel organizations.
You can also contact your alumni organization; many of these support
research around the world.
Green
Volunteers offers worldwide wildlife and conservation voluntary
work with nearly 500 projects listed. There are both short and long-term,
marine and terrestrial projects designed to protect a variety of habitats
and species.
Ecovolunteer
is based in the Netherlands, and has a list of volunteer projects,
based on species, and detailed information how to join.
Rainforest
Action Network has a page of volunteer opportunities and similar
travel, although many of the listing are not volunteer or research
travel, but opportunities for internships, research projects, and
overseas study. Click here
to have a look specifically at this page, or RAN's name for their
website generally.
Responsible
Ecological Social Tours Project is a Thai
organization that promotes travel using small villages and locals
to involve them in the tourism industry, and derive income from it,
rather than having the benefits of this major industry pass them by.
They also welcome volunteers to assist with their projects. This can
range from helping a village (or REST istself) develop a community-based
tourism program and infrastructure to directly assisting a village
with developing a better lifestyle. We'd be happy to help assist you
in contacting REST if you are interested in the volunteer aspect of
their programs, or you can go to our REST
pages for more information on them.
Ornjobs, a project of Ornithological Societies of
North America supported by Cornell sends out an email irregularly
with paid and volunteer positions, mostly working with birds during
the summer in the US. Jobs are primarily aimed at students or recent
grads seeking experience, and many have a small stipend. However,
hidden among these are usually some overseas wildlife volunteer jobs,
most of which have minimum periods of at least 2 to 3 weeks. Typical
work is bird-banding, observations, etc. Occasionally an opprtunity
to work with non-feathered species pops up. You can subscribe to their
listserv to get updates, but we list them as they come in, usually
evey week or so. We also feature international
wildlife work (and Alaska and Hawaii) from this source on the
next page (click below) on; current US
openings can be found on our bird
intern and jobs pages.
For 2007 we have selected the Tasmanian Devil, currently
facing a threat to its existance from Tasmanian
Devil Facial Tumour Disease, as our eco-charity. You can volunteer
to assist in monitoring the Devil in Tasmania - go to our Tassie
Devil Volunteer page.
Click
here for Research
& Volunteer Opportunities for Hawaii, Alaska and Other Countries
