How a Citizen Science Organization Wants to Preserve Places That Bring Visitors to Learn

Under the In the Peruvian Amazon, the Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Regional Conservation Area is home to a wide variety of species, including pink dolphins, rare monkeys, baboons, reptiles, hundreds of birds and a variety of plants. This is also one of the most famous examples of the government realizing that protecting nature does not mean keeping people out of it. Instead, it is possible for people to live together with nature and help protect the environment.

And the protection of the area is supported, among other things, by research conducted by visitors.

Biologist Richard Bodmer has been welcoming visitors to his research site on the banks of the Yarapa River, in the Economy region between Tamshiyacu Tahuayo and the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, to help survey wildlife and collect other environmental data for years. Its guests come through a partnership with Earthwatch Expeditions, a tour company that connects people and scientists conducting long-term research projects around the world and invites them to participate in “participatory science.” Earthwatch runs about a dozen expeditions: learning about the environment of polar bears in the Arctic, cranes in Texas, trees in Acadia National Park, and large animals in Kenya, among others.

At Amazon, research guides the day-to-day activities of (usually) an eight-day trip. Students sleep on a restored ship that was brought to the area in the early 1800s to transport rubber. Solar energy is used to power air conditioners and provide hot water for showers. The goal, Bodmer says, is to support conservation measures that protect the environment and the people who depend on it at the same time. A bonus is that economic activity directly linked to conservation helps remind the government that proper care is important in itself.

Every evening, the participants decide what they want to research: choose a specific animal to look for, in a specific place and in a specific area, at a specific time. Looking for parrots and other birds means taking a small boat up or down the river. “There, we watched and waited,” says Jared Katz, a Vermont psychologist who joined the Earthwatch expedition earlier this year with his wife, Jennifer Jewiss. “One of us had a GPS and was calling where we stopped that morning, and the other had a graphing board and a grid to record the data. The rest of us (and the two of them) were monitoring the aircraft.”

Collecting data over time has led to a better understanding of the environment. For example, Bodmer says, when birds move their roosts they can indicate changes in the water environment; the recent flooding in the area appears to have affected the monkeys, which move easily across the roof, less than the animals that live on the ground.

What’s notable about Bodmer’s Amazon River cruise is that travelers spend time in an area that is now protected by the government and controlled by Indians – in part because of their past explorations.

Real ecofriendlyness of ecotourism varies widely. In general, small businesses, local ownership, and community participation are important, says Gyan Nyaupane, who researches tourism, protected area management, and indigenous peoples and is the director of Arizona State University’s Center for Sustainable Tourism.

And while the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint is to protect the environment and not travel, and often the right way to deal with remote areas is to leave them alone, the reality is that governments want to see economic growth. “What is the best way to improve the economy? Is it better to dig the land? Or to build dams, good farming land?” says Nyaupane. “Ecotourism is probably more sustainable than any other income-generating business.”