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 itself) develop a community-based tourism program and infrastructure
to directly assisting a village with developing a better lifestyle.
In 2007 REST became part of Thailand's Community Based Tourism Institute,
but as of 2009 very few organized volunteer tours were in place. We're
currently trying to establish a more accessible system with them,
and when this is in place it will be announced here.
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 two from about January
to April, outside these months new opportunities slow down. 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
