These days it is hard to find a worthwhile volunteering experience that achieves genuine and tangible benefits. The market is full of profit-driven, unscrupulous operators, which do little for local wildlife at best and are harmful to it, and local communities, at worst (see our Top Ten Tips on choosing a wildlife volunteering experience on this topic and how to avoid the charlatans, as well as our opinion piece on voluntourism in nature conservation).
Committment and expedition leaders
At Biosphere Expeditions we carefully select long-term projects, always run by scientists embedded locally, that make a significant conservation impact (see our achievements). We make them feasible by providing the workforce (you) and funding (amongst other things your expedition contribution), and we don't just go there once, we keep going back until the work is done, even if it takes years. Your presence, your expedition contribution and the work you put in, are the reasons the research can be carried out. But it does not stop there. We are not just an administration body funding research and sending conservation expedition volunteers into the field. We get actively involved, with an expedition leader on every project. This leader stays with the expedition for the entire duration as an integral part of the expedition team, participating in the research, working, eating and staying with you, and generally making sure that things run safely and smoothly. Of course, the expedition leader is also there to provide guidance and leadership, to take care of any problems as they arise, and to be an interface between the expedition team, the local scientists and the local population.
We also have unique policies of non-growth and vegetarian food on expedition. To our knowledge we are the only wildlife conservation volunteering organisation with such progressive policies, if not the only conservation NGO with a meat-free policy, as many others appear to be too frightened to grasp that nettle.
After expedition travel comes serious science: We publish our expedition research results and finances in a clear and transparent way. As far as we are aware, Biosphere Expeditions is the only organisation in the world that has a direct and transparent link between the work done by citizen scientists and an expedition report. Each expedition year is matched by an expedition report for that year, which deals with the two main areas that expedition participants contribute to: funding and data collection. Chapter 1 of each report, written by Biosphere Expeditions, reviews the expedition logistics and publishes an expedition budget, which shows in a clear and transparent way income and expenditure for each expedition and the percentage of income spent on the project. Chapter 2 onwards, written by the expedition scientist, shows who collected what data, how they were analysed, what the conclusions were, as well as the conservation recommendations and actions flowing from this, and what future expeditions should do. In this way, each expedition comes full circle for its participants. We believe this transparency, and the clear results that are generated by each expedition, are two reasons why so many people come back time and again on expedition adventures with us.
Our overall research output is impressive. Just have a look at our ResearchGate page, which lists our expedition reports as well as articles in peer-reviewed science journals, presentations given and more.
But all of this is just us talking about ourselves. There is independent confirmation too, such as our many achievements and the multitude of awards we have won. We have been involved in the creation of protected areas, as well as species and habitat protection and action plans all over the world, have won awards such as the “Best Volunteering Organisation” award at the international Responsible Tourism Awards in London and an environment award from the German Minister for the Environment – the list goes on and you can see all our awards and achievements on our website. More independent confirmation comes from participant feedback or the media coverage we receive.