Kathryn Scott has measured the work of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds at sustainable coffee plantations in Costa Rica, documented the nesting and feeding habits of penguins in Patagonia and surveyed the health of coral reefs in the Caribbean.
Scott is not a formally trained scientist. The 75-year-old resident of Olympia, Wash., is a volunteer whose work on scientific expeditions was arranged through a nonprofit organization called Earthwatch Institute.
If you are eager to help in wildlife conservation, opportunities abound to work hands-on with small and cute animals, like baby owls, huge and cute ones like pandas and huge and not-so-cute beasts like rhinos. You can volunteer to work on research trips in the U.S., or abroad from Africa to Asia.
Penguin hatches in your hand
Scott has been on nine excursions arranged by Earthwatch, including a census of birds and bats in Cuba, a study of orca pod feeding habits in Canada and the compilation of data on birds and reptiles in Australia. One memory stands out. “My single favorite moment was the sight of a tiny penguin beak protruding out of the hole it had made in the egg it was hatching from,” she recalls.
Prefer to observe? There also are opportunities to watch conservation groups at work.
“It’s a way to go somewhere I’ve never been to do something I’ve never done,” says Scott. “Sometimes the unfamiliarity of a new place and a new task is a little scary. But it’s a good kind of scary — the kind where you’re operating with a little more alertness and a little more aliveness than in your familiar routines.”
An extra thrill: maybe you’ll help discover a new species, or help form a new nature reserve. Earthwatch, which pioneered its citizen science model in 1971, has discovered a new dinosaur and identified a new spider species in the Cape Cod National Seashore, where it also preserved and relocated a Life-Saving 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 and weigh and measure them after carrying them down, one baby per sack. “It was really fun,” she says. “They were very cute, maybe four inches, and already had feathers. Their parents were pretty good about it.”