Volunteer in Ecuador with Earthwatch

Working with Locals in Scientific Research Worldwide

By Tom Davis

I didn't need a graduate degree in Spanish to translate "Ai Yi Yi!" Pascual had found a bat tangled in the mist net we were using to capture and study birds in the Ecuadorian jungle. The bat was pissed. My eyes were locked on its needle-sharp teeth, and for a few seconds my brain was focused on only one thought--rabies.

I was there as a volunteer on an Earthwatch expedition. Earthwatch, www.earthwatch.org, is a clearinghouse that finds interested volunteers for scientific projects located all over the world. The projects change regularly and span a wide variety of scientific disciplines. At any given time, about 120 are listed in Earthwatch's giant catalog.

The principal investigator for each project is usually a university professor; the volunteer's job is to help him or her with research. This project, Ecuador's Forest Birds (www.earthwatch.org/expeditions/becker.html), is run by Dusty Becker of Kansas State Univ. She is trying to learn more about the birds in the coastal Chongon Colonche mountains of Ecuador.

No Plastic Bubble

My earlier experiences in tropical America were package tours. The first was to the Galapagos Islands. On the next, a whirlwind tour of Costa Rica, we saw lots of interesting animals, but I was amazed at how effectively the tour guides kept us from interacting with the local people. I went three weeks early to take intensive Spanish classes and live with a Costa Rican family, so a canned tour at the end was particularly disturbing--I was put in a plastic bubble and protected from Costa Rica for 11 days.

Earthwatch isn't like that. In most of the projects I've done, the research is in association with locals. Dusty works with Ecuadorian ornithologists and plant experts, and we volunteers worked side by side with four Ecuadorians. The volunteers are international as well--in four Earthwatch trips I've never been on one that didn't have at least two volunteers who were not from the U.S.

Another difference between Earthwatch expeditions and packaged tours is that on packaged tours you pay to make sure that nothing interesting happens. On Earthwatch trips, it's just the opposite--you may be up to your hips in mud and two hours from your base when the sun goes down. You may find yourself coaxing whip scorpions into zip-lock bags. Or you may find a bat entangled in your mist net.

On these projects you get to do all sorts of things and meet all sorts of people, some of whom are even crazier than you. And since the project is run by a biology professor, it's like being in a biology lab 24 hours a day with no final exam.

You really get to know people because you work with them every day as a team. There's nothing like taking an angry bat out of a net or helping to haul 10 extremely heavy bamboo poles through hundreds of meters of deep mud to bond you with your fellow volunteers.

I should add that not all the Earthwatch trips are as rugged as the one in Ecuador. We were a hard six-hour hike from civilization, lived in tents, cooked for ourselves, and all our supplies came in by mule at irregular intervals. On other expeditions you can live a life of relative luxury--with someone to cook your meals, a bed, and hot showers at the end of every day. If you study dolphins in Hawaii, I understand, you basically live in a condo. Of course you'll never catch me on a trip like that.

TOM DAVIS is officially a mathematician but makes his living as a computer programmer. He is currently on leave from Silicon Graphics, a company he co-founded, and does a lot of volunteer work for organizations like Earthwatch. See his web site at www.geometer.org.