Volunteer Vacations

By Sophia Dembling

On one side of an unpaved road in La Manzanilla, Mexico, tourists and locals frolic on the Pacific coast. On the other side of that road, I am with a boatload of Earthwatch volunteers and a researcher, collecting data on a research expedition called “Mexican Mangroves and Wildlife.” Our boat bobs in a swamp amongst the crocodiles, which one by one give us the fish-eye before sinking into the murky water. All around, birds rustle, flutter, splash and chuckle in the mangroves and overhead.

Volunteers with better developed bird-watching skills than I (to understate the case) press binoculars to their eyes and scan the skies and trees, calling out the birds they spot while I huddle over a clipboard with another volunteer and scribble the sightings in a log.

“Two roseate spoonbills, 4 o’clock!”

“Great white heron, 12 o’clock to 3 o’clock!”

“Grackle, 4 o’clock to 1 o’clock!”

I am on the scene courtesy of Earthwatch, the international volunteer organization that connects the public and scientists. Earthwatch is changing the world, one “voluntourist” at a time.

Since its founding in 1971, Earthwatch has supported more than 1,322 projects in 119 countries with the participation of more than 81,000 volunteers. All Earthwatch-supported projects are in some way related to sustainable development, which is the focus of our expedition.

We tromp through the mangrove forest, measuring the diameter of tree trunks, counting the raw ends of branches that have been sawed off for firewood, assessing the health of the canopy overhead and (let’s not sugarcoat it) the density of drifts of toilet tissue on the ground. One point about conservation that needs to be raised, explains researcher Juan Francisco Castellanos Avila (a.k.a. Paco), is the necessity for a public restroom to serve the beach and campgrounds along it. La Manzanilla, just three hours southeast of Puerto Vallarta, is attracting an increasing number of tourists, for better and worse.

Burgeoning construction and development are threatening fragile mangrove systems that provide crucial wildlife habitat, prevent soil erosion and catch dirt runoff, keeping it off coral reefs. Enter Jerry Keir, a doctoral candidate in environmental studies at the University of Nevada, and Paulino Ponce Campos of Bosque Tropical A.C., a Jalisco-based environmental research organization, to lead our research into helping conserve the mangroves.

“All the research we support is completely independent and peer-reviewed,” says Earthwatch President Ed Wilson, who has been with the organization for 15 years. “And it’s not just research for the sake of academia. It’s research that has an application and a value.”

For volunteers, an Earthwatch expedition is a value-added vacation, and many become hooked on the experience. In La Manzanilla, I meet Ann McAllister, a psychologist from Atlanta who’s on her 11th Earthwatch expedition. “Plain old touring and travel just doesn’t appeal to me,” she tells me. “I have to feel like I’m giving something back, even if it’s minuscule.”

This project is easy stuff for McAllister, who has also tracked orangutans with Richard Leaky protégé Birute Galdikas in Borneo, bobbed in a Zodiac among humpback whales in Hawaii, hiked eight miles daily over rugged terrain to count herbivores in South Africa, and been dive-bombed by gulls in Maine while conducting research on their nesting grounds. “All the volunteers compared guano hits,” she recalls with a laugh. Her accommodations have included an open-air tent in a campsite protected from wildlife by an electric fence, and a shared room in a Scottish castle. (At La Manzanilla, we stay in tents in a beach campground.)

Along with me and McAllister, the nine-day Earthwatch team includes a retired biology teacher, a high school counselor, a first-year master’s student of environmental science and one very avid bird-watcher. Three participants (one from Japan, one from Brazil and one from England) have had their way paid by HSBC, an international banking company that offers Earthwatch fellowships to its employees.

“A lot of companies are now looking into the whole area of corporate responsibility,” says Wilson, Earthwatch’s president. For many of these corporations, their involvement is one way of demonstrating that responsibility, although the methods vary according to the company.

For example, Travelocity offers grants to join expeditions. Chemical company Lyondell partners with Earthwatch to fund teachers’ participation in expeditions that go to work in communities where the company has plants.

“Each teacher reaches about 450 students,” Wilson says. “And we’re increasingly using technology so when we send that teacher out, we provide satellite phone, camera and Web linkup so they can communicate back to their classrooms or school district.”

Action and education are combined in an Earthwatch expedition. In La Manzanilla, when volunteers aren’t in the forest, on the swamp or snorkeling the Tenactatita reef to collect data, they might be in the classroom learning about environmental challenges to the region, local flora and fauna, and the skills necessary for data collection. (Believe me—identifying birds and fish is a lot easier when you see them in a PowerPoint presentation than it is when you’re on the swamp or snorkeling the reef.)

Evenings are spent hanging out at camp. Although on some expeditions food is prepared for volunteers, we form teams and take turns cooking and cleaning up after meals. (We get a little competitive with guacamole recipes, and quesadillas and breakfast tacos go over big.) After-dinner entertainment might be a margarita in town, a lecture from one of the researchers or, as on one night, the sight of an enormous pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins making graceful arcs across the horizon not far from shore.

The moment reminds us why the coastline needs protection—and that the trip is not all work. It’s still the Mexican coast, after all. For Earthwatch volunteers, the world is a laboratory, and the laboratory is a beautiful place.

“I’m not completely noble,” McAllister says. “This is a vacation.”

Sophia Dembling is the author of "The Making of Dr. Phil."

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Earthwatch (800-776-0188 or www.earthwatch.org) has expeditions all over the world. Prices do not include transportation.

Some interesting future projects:
• Mexican Megafauna
— Uncover fossils in Central Mexico; $1,546; June 22–28, June 29–July 5, July 13–19.
• Tuscany’s Castle Catignano—Excavate the site of an 11th-century castle; $3,346; June 29–July 12, July 13–26.
Family Teams expeditions include age-appropriate activities for kids, as well as time for families to relax together.
• Puerto Rico’s Rainforests—Research ways to protect forest diversity; $2,146; June 18–24 and December 27–January 2, 2009. Ages 10 and up.
• Whales of British Columbia—Learn about the lives of gray whales; $2,646; August 6–12.