Love animals? Consider a vacation with them.

Kathryn Scott has measured the work of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds on sustainable coffee plantations in Costa Rica, documented the nesting and feeding habits of penguins in Patagonia, and studied the health of coral reefs in the Caribbean.

Scott is not a formally trained scientist. The 75-year-old resident of Olympia, Washington, is a volunteer whose work on scientific expeditions has been organized through a nonprofit called the Earthwatch Institute.

If you’re eager to contribute to wildlife conservation, opportunities abound to work directly with small and cute animals, like baby owls, huge and cute animals like pandas, and huge and not-so-cute beasts like rhinos. . You can volunteer to work on research trips in the United States or abroad, from Africa to Asia.

Penguin hatching in your hand

Scott has participated in nine excursions organized by Earthwatch, including a bird and bat census in Cuba, a study of the feeding habits of orcas in Canada, and the compilation of data on birds and reptiles in Australia. A memory emerges. “My favorite moment was seeing a little penguin beak sticking out of the hole it had made in the egg from which it was hatching,” she recalls.

Do you prefer to observe? It is also possible to observe conservation groups at work.

“It’s a way to go somewhere I’ve never been to do something I’ve never done,” Scott says. “Sometimes being unfamiliar with a new place and a new task is a little scary. But it’s a good form of horror, one where you operate with a little more alertness and a little more alertness than in your familiar routines.”

An added thrill: you may contribute to the discovery of a new species or the creation of a new nature reserve. Earthwatch, which launched its citizen science model in 1971, discovered a new dinosaur and identified a new spider species on the Cape Cod National Seashore, where it also preserved and relocated a lifesaving station built in 1897.

Working in an owl nursery

In northern Utah, Marcia Henderson, 66, of Las Vegas, climbed ladders to pluck baby owls from their nests in trees, weighing and measuring them after bringing them down, one baby per bag. “It was really fun,” she said. “They were very cute, maybe four inches, and already had feathers. Their parents were pretty good with that.”

In China, Henderson worked in a panda kindergarten and daycare, monitored pregnant pandas, and hand-carried two e-collars to China from Denver-based Pandas International, where his brother works, to track the pandas before releasing them into the wild. His 13 volunteer trips with Earthwatch include the same trip to Patagonia that Scott took.

“Penguins are clowns, so funny,” she recalls. “Their parents protested that we were removing their chicks.” A surprising sight: seeing an armadillo infiltrate a flock to try to steal penguin eggs.

In the Peruvian part of the Amazon rainforest, she participated in a study of macaws, weighed piranhas (with gloves), set camera traps to observe the behavior of pink dolphins, baby caimans and other wildlife, and entered data into the computer.

In South Africa, she worked with Rhino 911 as the rhino rescue service tracked and found an injured baby rhino, which was searched, x-rayed and administered medication.

In Malawi, where elephants, lions, rhinos, giraffes and cheetahs have been reintroduced after being hunted to extinction decades ago, she set up camera traps in the Majete Wildlife Reserve to observed their behavior and collected trash from the park with the village children. According to her, “this is a real success for African Parks”, a non-profit organization which manages 22 national parks and reserves in 12 countries.

All animals, all the time

It’s not like Henderson lacks contact with animals back home in Las Vegas. She has two dogs, an Airedale and terrier mix, and four birds, a cockatoo, a parrot, a crowned conure and a parakeet. She raised horses, donkeys, peacocks, a goat and a pig, who have since died. “It was a rural place when we moved here 37 years ago, and a horse-only area,” she explains. Even in her Air Force job, she trained and worked with drug and explosive sniffing dogs.

Why not just help the local ASPCA? “These trips are a great opportunity to go behind the scenes and help animals, which are close to my heart,” says Henderson. “Some say paying to work costs a lot of money, but it goes to a good cause, for research and equipment. Earthwatch takes very good care of its volunteers and is safety conscious.”

She selects trips based on the destination and the project itself. Activity levels vary from light to very intense. Their most demanding was Andorra, the small principality in the Pyrenees mountains, where they captured birds in nets to check their rings. (“My REI hiking poles came in handy.”)

Accommodations and prices also vary greatly depending on the project and location. In Utah, three biologists and 12 volunteers, mostly aged 50 and older, shared a large rented house. “The biologists cooked, shopped and took us out to dinner,” she says.

In the Amazon, volunteers set up on a riverboat – “not a fancy boat”. In Malawi, it was a tent; in South Africa, a shared cabin. In Patagonia, a semi-arid plateau shared by Argentina and Chile, Scott was staying in a large house by the beach.

Earthwatch Expedition costs range from $1,500 (Australian Great Barrier Reef) to $4,150 (South Africa), excluding airfare. Daily costs range from $259 (16 days in South Africa) to $414 (seven days in Costa Rica) and $550 (seven days in Patagonia).

The Earthwatch website can sort excursions by continent, trip type (ocean or wildlife/ecosystems), and month, displays accommodation types, food, and activity level, as well as information about the scientist and results search for previous trips.

If you prefer a relaxing vacation, Audley Travel, a tour operator offering customized trips around the world (mostly but not entirely luxury), can arrange tours to see wildlife conservation in action. At the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a 90,000-acre nonprofit wildlife reserve in Kenya, for example, you can help train guard dogs to track down a new scent.

If chimpanzees are more your thing, you can help them reconnect with humans at the Rubondo Island camp on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Here, a chimpanzee rehabilitation project has been so successful that researchers now need help reaccustoming them to humans so they can conduct vital research.

Black Tomato, another custom-only global tour operator, offers excursions and educational experiences created for families (but many adults go without the kids). Its least expensive tour involves conserving habitat on Thailand’s southern coast to help the dugong, a marine mammal related to manatees. Work includes planting seagrass beds and possibly dismantling entangled fishing nets and other hazards; the cost is $10,920 for 12 days.

The most expensive trips range from New Zealand’s Southern Alps, where you join a conservationist to protect kiwis and other native birds from predators, to the French Riviera, where you observe conservation in the Pelagos Sanctuary, a major marine reserve for fin whales (30,000 people gather there). in summer).

Henderson sums up the appeal of volunteer animal trips. “It really takes my travel experience to a different level.”