HELPING HOLIDAYS
Volunteering can elevate a vacation to the extraordinary, offering the chance of an unforgettable experience while making a difference.
Word: VICTORIA BURROWS
p in the snow-capped Tien Shan mountains, a team of researchers are tracking snow leopards, recording their pugmarks, kills and scat. Sightings of the cats themselves are rare estimates say there are as few as 3,500 in the wild, with 150 to 200 in Kyrgyzstan. They are also shy, solitary and elusive, disappearing into the on softly padded feet.
The team is up in the mountains to get a population estimate and assess the status and distribution of their prey species such as the Tien Shan argali and the Central Asian ibex, along with other animals such as marmots and birds. They also work with local communities and the anti-poaching patrol on educational activities.
at such high altitude s, with the terrain covered reaching up to 3,800m above sea level, and expedition-style base with accommodation in yurts and dome tents. But the tracking being expanding knowledge of these vulnerable creatures in support of , is worthy work.
While scientists run the programme, much of the daily recording is done by layperson volunteers who pay around US$3,000 (S$4,100) plus flights for two weeks up this stunning , remote region. The programme is offered by Biosphere Expeditions, an award-winning citizen science-based wildlife conservation nonprofit founded in 1999.
Biosphere Expeditions is just one organisation offering such trips to those something more meaningful than itineraries . Volunteers with the Earthwatch Institute can channel their in help ing excavate the Roman settlement of Poggio del Molino in for fossils in Zambia , searching for pink river dolphins and giant the Amazon Basin , trail ing or track ing killer whales
Meanwhile, Global Vision International , set up in 1997, use s the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a for its trips, which include
snorkelling the reefs of Fiji or the Seychelles to monitor coral health, teaching English to Buddhist monks in Cambodia and supporting women’s empowerment in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal.
Dr Alan Lee, a South African biologist and bird expert, started volunteering at a young age and is today an expedition scientist with Biosphere Expeditions. His parents would take h e and his sister to game reserve s for the weekend as part of the Friends of the Pilansberg society. I n exchange for free entry
to the national park, they would spend a day helping with trail clearing or other maintenance.
Later, he spent seven years in Peru working for a volunteer project investigating the impact of tourism on Amazonian wildlife, then monitoring macaw nests and parrot community riverside clay licks. His experience as a young scientist inspired his PhD, which focused on the parrots of the Peruvian Amazon, plus his post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Cape
Town specialising in endemic birds.
Lee now runs his own volunteer programme on the former farm, now nature reserve, which he calls home: Blue Hill Nature Reserve in Baviaanskloof, just north of South Africa’s famed Garden Route.
Lee says that, over the years, he has seen some participants profoundly influenced by their experiences in the field: “We had a young lad, about 18 years old, come from England to help in the study of sunbirds, and he loved it so much it dictated his career trajectory and he now works to mitigate the Indonesian songbird crisis .”
But not all experiences are so positive. One participant on a Peruvian expedition was expecting a luxurious two-week safari and it “became an emotional situation”.
“I had to sit him down and explain what the project involved,” says Lee. “You have to know what you’re getting into.
Accommodation can be fairly basic, with simple but wholesome food. For people expecting flowers in the loo, this is probably not for you. Nevertheless, I had a feeling of immense pride on the final day when this man, who was previously not interested in birds, pointed to a tree and said, ‘There’s a trogon!’”
There are other harsher criticisms of
volunteerism. In a column titled “The Problem With Little White Girls (and Boys): Why I Stopped Being a Voluntourist” published by the Huffington Post and on Medium ( where it earned two million views) , American designer and writer Pippa Biddle wrote a damning critique of “v olunt ourism”. She explained how, as a teenager, she went on a school trip to Tanzania with the aim of building a library. She only found out later what really happened
She writes: “Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students, were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure.
It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for over six hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.”
Besides charging that privileged and inexperienced volunteers do more harm than good on the ground , others criticise how volunteer programme funds are not
effectively used, that volunteering suggests there is a simple solution to complex social issues, that volunteers may do work that could be paying job s for locals and that locals are often left out of the solution.
While such criticism is valid, those in the volunteer community point out the good that volunteering can accomplish if these programmes are set up correctly. They concede that pr ogrammes should address community needs and involve the community and, in the right circumstances, aim to equip the local beneficiaries with the necessary skills to eventually take over the project.
Along with bringing in much needed funds, volunteering also benefits nature conservation as effective policy is often based on large amounts of data, which is straightforward but laborious to collect. Studies since the 1960s have shown that volunteer “foot soldiers” – who collect biological data and chang e batteries and SD cards in camera traps, for example – can make significant contributions to mitigating wildlife and environmental issues.
A volunteer-powered project run by US-based Adventure Scientists, for instance , assembled the largest known microplastics data set ever recorded, which demonstrated
the global reach of microplastics pollution.
Even the focus on “sexy” animal species , to the detriment of less glamorous critters that may be more endangered or contribute more to an ecosystem, can be at least partly justified. While projects to protect the flagship species of the Sumatran rhino, of which there are thought to be only 34 to 47 left in the wild, attracts funding and citizen scientists, other threatened animals benefit from rangers patrolling the Indonesian forest, for example.
“We, with a heavy heart, have to turn down interesting proposals for lack of species sex appeal, because I know that coconut crabs in Tanzania or scorpions in Burundi will simply not stand a chance against snow leopards of the Tien Shan mountains or Sumatran tigers,” says Dr Matthias Hammer, who founded Biosphere Expeditions.
“But flagship species fly the flag of conservation, serving as a conservation tool for the less sexy species, as they flutter in the wind, inspiring people and attracting funding, catalysing positive action and protecting whole habitats full of more ‘boring’ species in their wake. This is how I can justify our focus on charismatic animals to myself and the organisation.”