How a Citizen Science Organization Aims to Preserve Places Brings Visitors to Study
Deep in the In the Peruvian Amazon, the Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Regional Conservation Area boasts a wide variety of life—pink dolphins, rare monkeys, giant river otters, reptiles, and hundreds of different species of birds and plants. It is also one of the most prominent examples of the government realizing that conservation does not require people to enter. That instead, it is possible for people to live together with nature and help protect it.
And the region’s protected status is supported, in part, by research conducted by visitors.
Biologist Richard Bodmer has been welcoming visitors to his research station along the Yarapa River, in a piece of Indigenous territory between Tamshiyacu Tahuayo and another area managed by indigenous communities, the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, to help track wildlife and collect other ecosystem data for decades. His guests come in partnership with Earthwatch Expeditions, a travel company that connects people with scientists doing long-term research projects around the world and invites them to participate in “hands-on science.” Earthwatch runs about a dozen expeditions: studying the nature of polar bears in the Arctic, whooping cranes in Texas, trees in Acadia National Park, and large mammals in Kenya, among others.
In the Amazon, research guides the daily activities of (usually) an eight-day trip. Participants sleep in a restored ship that was brought to the region in the early 19th century to transport rubber. Solar energy is used to power the air conditioner and provide hot water for the shower. The goal, Bodmer says, is to support conservation strategies that simultaneously protect the environment and the people who depend on it. The bonus is that the economic activity directly linked to keeping those ecosystems strong helps remind the government that effective conservation is important in its own right.
Every evening, the participants identify their research objectives: choose a specific animal to study, in a specific area and throughout a specific area, during a specific time window. Looking for parrots and other birds means taking a small boat up or down the river. “There, we watched and waited,” said Jared Katz, a psychiatrist in Vermont who joined the Earthwatch expedition earlier this year with his wife, Jennifer Jewiss. “One of us had a GPS and was calling out the coordinates of each stop we made that morning, and the other had a clipboard and grid to record the data. The rest of us (and those two) were watching the flight.”
The collection of data over time has led to a greater understanding of the ecosystem. For example, Bodmer says, birds moving where they roost may suggest changes in the habitat; the recent floods in the region seem to affect the monkeys, which easily move through the canopy, under the ground-dwelling animals.
The highlight of Bodmer’s Amazon river cruise is that travelers spend time in an area that is now protected by the government and owned by Indigenous people—in part because of the results of his previous research teams.
A true natural friendship ecotourism is very diverse. In general, small-scale operations, local ownership, and community participation are important, says Gyan Nyaupane, who researches ecotourism, protected area management, and Indigenous Peoples and serves as director of Arizona State University’s Center for Sustainable Tourism.
And while the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint and protect natural resources is to not travel, and often the most appropriate way to communicate with remote communities is to leave them alone, the truth is that governments want to see economic growth. “What is the best way to develop the economy? Is it better to mine these areas? Or build dams, clear the land for agriculture?” said Nyaupane. “Ecotourism is probably more sustainable than any other manufacturing industry.”
