Wildlife Volunteering — Expectations, Reality, Responsibility Sharan Bahra, Earthwise Aware‘s Vice-President, was recently in Kenya, where she helped a conservation organization focused on protecting both giraffes and lions. In an EwA post series, Sharan shares about the many facets of volunteering for wildlife conservation. Previously, she wrote about the difficulties of finding ethical conservation venues, […]
Posts tagged Volunteering
Volunteering in Kenya – Choosin...
Volunteering in Kenya — Choosing the Right Programme Sharan Bahra, Earthwise Aware‘s Vice-President, was recently in Kenya, where she helped a conservation organization focused on protecting both giraffes and lions. Here is her first post of a series, where she shares about the difficulties of finding ethical conservation venues, and how she led her research […]
Attracting & Retaining Citizen S...
Attracting & Retaining Citizen Scientists Some conservation citizen science organizations run projects that can be quickly carried out by citizen scientists without supervision. And for those organizations, a common practice is to motivate people with a few good training events. Then, we encourage our citizen scientists to organize themselves and do the work individually or […]
Cub Petting: Cute and Harmful…
Before considering cub petting or volunteering in a facility that allows close interactions with cubs, pause, research and think about the consequences… A vast number of animal lovers choose to ‘volunteer’ at cat parks and sanctuaries that are nothing else than big cats breeding & cub petting facilities posing as conservation enterprises. This includes lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, and […]
Spotting Conservation Volunteering Fa...
I’ve heard that a lot of companies are just a front and aren’t really about volunteering. Is that true? Yes, that is true and even more so when volunteering is about supposedly preserving species that happen to be majestic, beautiful and/or have cute babies… So you need to watch out. Here are a few tips to help you distinguish […]
The Rescues of Jogja
The weeks I stayed there watching the consequences that we as humans can have in an animal’s life made me think a lot about how selfish we can be, and how much more we have to learn and understand about how harmful our behavior can be. After an unforgettable experience wandering in the Sumatran jungle tracking and […]
Protecting the Elusive Peruvian Bear
“We can prevent starvation and the suffering of spectacled bears by protecting their habitat and engaging local villages in conservation.” —Robyn Appleton In 2016, Sam joined a conservation volunteer mission in Peru led by the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society. After she returned we chatted with Sam, wanting to hear more about her time with this small […]
The Bats of Lubee
It took only mere minutes and I was in love, these perfect creatures were an incredible part of nature and it became clear to me how gravely misunderstood they are… Early in November, I set out to Gainesville, Florida to attend a Fruit Bat husbandry course hosted by Lubee Bat Conservancy. The annual husbandry course sees […]
Orangutan Health Field Research in Su...
Back in the field at the end of this month! Sharan was in Malaysia helping the establishment of a wildlife corridor earlier in October. This time, Claire is leaving for Sumatra to join a veterinary science program, with Orangutan Health Project (OHP), that researches the special behavior and ecological conditions necessary to maintain health in wild orangutans, using parasitic […]
EwA Field Work: Reporting from The Co...
Live Reporting from the Field We are currently in Borneo supporting reforestation in the Kinabatangan area. The volunteer project is run by Ape Malaysia and is dedicated to work with the local Orang Sungai villagers to collaborate and educate about conservation as well as replenishing the original forests which were cut down for mainly logging […]