VARIOUS UNIQUE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS IN THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST

Location: different regions across the country depending on the type of program

These programs were designed to build a world where nature conservation and sustainability thinking are cornerstones of a society's development and well-being, resulting in a healthy and prosperous Planet Earth for everyone. The goal and aim of these programs are to identify and implement long lasting methods to conserve Peru's biological and cultural diversity while contributing to the improvement of people's lives. Our programs are focused on scientific research; environmental education; green business development; collaborative engagement with local communities, companies, government institutions and donors; as well as skills training and team-building among the young, advocacy and information sharing. Become a volunteer, intern, thesis researcher, ecotourist, photographer, filmmaker, educator or sponsor. Our teams are active throughout the year in lowland rain forest and upland cloud forest in the Amazon Basin, ranging far through forest and mixed-habitat landscapes, collecting and interpreting data on the status of wildlife and threats in order to understand how wild nature works, how nature responds to human activities, and how best to protect the most vulnerable habitats and species. As a volunteer or intern, you will get a unique opportunity to learn about the challenges that local people face and how they are pulling together to meet and overcome their environmental and economic problems. If you venture to these foreign lands, you will come away with a new set of skills and experiences, valuable knowledge, fabulous memories, friendships and contacts that may last a lifetime, and a strong feeling of accomplishment having contributed to conserving tropical nature and bettering lives. We encourage you to explore the various different programs we offer below:

Assist our lowland Amazon rain forest bird research team as a volunteer or intern and experience life as an avifauna conservation biologist in the humid tropics. Learn field techniques for surveying forest understory bird diversity, population abundance, and community assemblage. These techniques include mist netting, bird banding and ringing, unbounded point counts, mixed-species flock follows, and much more besides. Volunteers will learn the basic techniques from our international team of avifauna experts. Intern candidates will learn in much more detail all aspects of the field techniques used, including the important molt cycle analysis process for ageing birds, as well as special visual and auditory techniques for species identification, data processing and analysis, and mapping. Interns also have the chance to lead their own personal research project on birds, for dissertation, thesis or independent publication purposes.

Assist our lowland rainforest Herpetofauna Research Team and live the life of an amphibian and reptile biologist in the humid tropics. Learn field techniques for studying rain forest amphibian and reptile diversity, population dynamics, and community assemblage, such as line transects in forest habitats, quadrant or plot counts, pit fall traps with drift fences, river and lake-side counts from boats, mark-release-recapture methods based on Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) systems, and intensive searches of micro-habitats, including of course grimy swamps and log jammed streams. Volunteers will learn the basic survey techniques from our team of herpetology specialists. Successful intern candidates will learn in much more detail all aspects of the field research we undertake, including intensive training in proper snake, caiman, and amphibian handling techniques (venomous snakes however are not handled by non-specialists), snake identification via scale counts and colour patterns, amphibian identification via calls, using PIT systems to determine movement patterns of reptiles, and data processing, analysis and mapping. Interns also have the chance to lead their own research project on amphibians and reptiles, for dissertation, thesis or personal publication purposes.

As a volunteer or intern, you will assist our team in the Quellomayo area of the Vilcanota River valley, located in the Cusco region within the Buffer Zone of the Machu Picchu Sanctuary, with a broad mix of research activities relating to birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects and plants. You will need to be fit and energetic to make the most of assisting this team, as the terrain is hilly and even mountainous in places, requiring the team to climb up and down steep slopes and through cold mountain streams as they sample wildlife using transects, plots, mist-nets, and so forth. Field work takes place at altitudes ranging from 1,300 to 3,000 metres above sea level.

As an amateur or professional photographer; during your internship (1-3 months), you will visit some of the most remote, fascinating and largely unspoiled parts of the Peruvian Amazon rain forest. Photography has now become an important component in many of our projects, as a way for us to answer certain biological questions, to better communicate what our field teams are trying so hard to achieve, as well as to illustrate our research, education, community development, and ultimately our biodiversity conservation outcomes for the benefit of policy makers, our donors, and our followers. With field leadership from professional photographers we can provide the necessary skills training for those people who may be unfamiliar with the photography techniques that work in this awesome if challenging environment. In parallel to providing our field teams in the Amazon with the imagery that they require, photography interns are free to collect imagery for their own portfolios.

The Community Development and Engagement Team work with multiple native and mestizo communities in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, that together manage more than 50,000 hectares of lowland tropical forest, helping community members implement their long-term development goals. These goals are laid out in community-specific development plans with five year implementation periods and cover themes such as education, health, management of natural resources, transport and communication, ecotourism, community decision-making processes, community infrastructure (e.g. piped water, electricity, building projects), and events.

As an intern or a volunteer, you will assist with community and green business development activities, including basic village infrastructure projects (schools, health post, clean water systems and waste management, signage, etc.), reviewing non-timber forest product extraction plans, agroforestry work, environmental education, market research, and so forth. This initiative is all about positive engagement with urban and rural communities in South Eastern Peru, bringing people and nature closer together, helping families appreciate the value of their community forests, inspiring teachers to inspire their students with inspiring wildlife rich educational opportunities, and encouraging the younger generation to think and act more sustainability. Our objectives are to maintain open door policies towards local people from urban and rural areas enabling them to explain the environmental and economic problems they face and to express their ideas for solving them and what kind of assistance they may require or need. Common ways we work closely with communities are environmental education programs in primary and secondary schools, planning assistance with respect to community based ecotourism projects, non-timber forest product development, finding appropriate donors for community led projects and general accompaniment for communities who are transitioning to more sustainable methods of land use. Volunteers and interns work closely with our community development coordinators undertaking numerous and varied activities, spending 80% of their time in one or more communities, with the remaining 20% of their time in Puerto Maldonado or one of our field training sites preparing material and planning for the community stays.

The team's activities, which are related to community development plans, are very varied and can include: Assisting with environmental education needs in the community school. Mapping the population size and distribution of non-timber forest products and other natural resource assets, and monitoring change in these assets over time, as inputs into sustainable management plans and decision-making processes regarding economic activities within community forests. Joining families as they plan and subsequently undertake trips to harvest non-timber forest products from community forests, such as Brazil nuts, palm leaves for thatching, and medicinal plants, including monitoring the volume of harvested products from different areas of these forests. Accompanying families on short trips to gather agricultural crops from their personal plots near the central village, such as maize, bananas, papayas, cacao and so forth. Preparing interpretation material and trail signage for forest trails in those communities where ecotourism activities are common. Accompanying community monitoring officers as they interview community members and when they undertake periodic environmental monitoring trips around the borders of community lands. Assisting with updating community development plans, which will include helping to take notes during community meetings. Promoting transparent, gender-inclusive decision-making processes within communities, while also respecting cultural norms and valuing all opinions made. Identifying opportunities in terms of external funding for implementing components of community development plans, such as from Peruvian government agencies and non-profit organizations in Peru and abroad, as well as potential new, untapped markets for their sustainably-harvested forest products (Brazil nuts, cacao, coffee, etc.). Assist communities and families understand Peruvian law, so that they can best take advantage of opportunities without generating problems for themselves in the future as their set of activities grow. Helping the team coordinator prepare material for annual reports and presentations to be given to communities and project donors; to name but a few of the activities.

Accommodation at communities for the team are varied and include a combination of either home stays, tents placed in the community visitor building (maloca comunal), or bunk beds in bespoke ecotourism visitor centres that some of the communities have built. We provide all bedding, mosquito nets and tents where required. We either pay one or more families to help cook meals for the team, or if this is not possible then we hire a bespoke chef from Puerto Maldonado to accompany the team. When at a community, activities during weekdays invariably begin early in the morning with breakfast shortly after dawn at 6 am, followed by meeting up with community members to undertake one or other of the morning activities discussed with them the previous day, which end typically around 10 am or 11 am. There is then time to shower, relax, and have lunch at 1 pm. Around 3 pm, the afternoon activities begin. These finish around 6 pm but may extend into the night to around 8 pm if a lengthy community meeting is still underway. The team has dinner sometime between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm, before retiring for the night. During weekends, Saturday and Sunday, activities may be scaled back as families take time off to rest. However, sporting activities such as volleyball and football (soccer) are played in the afternoons on these days from 4 pm to 6 pm. Only about half of the communities have cell phone reception.

PLEASE NOTE:

HAVING A STRONG KNOWLEDGE OF SPANISH IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR VOLUNTEERS AND INTERNS WHO ASSIST THIS PROJECT, AS THIS WILL ALLOW THEM TO COMMUNICATE WITH AND PARTICIPATE MORE FREELY DURING COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES.

Assist our Mammal Research Team as a volunteer or intern and learn to undertake camera trap, line transect, track based, and home range studies of terrestrial and arboreal mammals, including the techniques we use to identify the 50 species of medium to large sized mammals that we are interested in monitoring, and the skills required to process, analyze, map and interpret the field data collected. Interns also have the chance to lead their own mini-research project on mammals, for dissertation, thesis or personal publication purposes. Our mammal research team is tasked with establishing detailed baselines of information on the diversity and abundance of species at field sites using robust sampling methods; and then to periodically monitor these variables in conjunction with the environmental and human-related factors that can help explain the patterns in diversity and abundance observed over time within and between sites. These factors include habitat characteristics, climate, human activities (with an emphasis on threats), and the status of predators, prey, and parasites.

Volunteer on the Animal Rescue Team and help injured, abandoned, and initially depressed wild animals, that have been found or confiscated, back on their feet and onto the path to recovery and reintroduction back into the forest where they belong. You will be taught to safely handle many species, help feed them, keep their enclosures clean and free of parasites, assist the resident vets with their rounds, and help plan and execute the safe reintroduction of animals back into their native habitat, and in some cases monitoring movement patterns of released individuals (having previously placed temporary locators on them). We have teamed up with two other non-profits in order to help deal with the growing problem of wild animals that have been found abandoned, injured, or confiscated by the local authorities because they were being abused or were being illegally trafficked out of the region to fuel the international trade in exotic pets. Together, our objectives are to improve the facilities and processes at animal rescue centres to allow safe and humane care to be given to wild animals brought to these centres; to rehabilitate the animals; to reintroduce those animals that are fit enough to be sent back into the wild (and to find permanent homes for those that cannot); and to educate local people regarding the plight of these wild animals, especially those species that are being trafficked or held as pets in unfavourable conditions in the hope that this will help stem the flow of animals towards these rescue centres.

Assist our Botany Research Team as a volunteer or intern with multiple tasks related to understanding the taxonomic diversity, abundance and community assemblage of 30 keystone tree species using plot and transect-based methods, including data analysis and interpretation techniques. All of the fauna monitoring teams require good quality botanical and forest structure information in order to help them understand the variables that affect fauna diversity and abundance within and between sites. In addition, we are very interested in monitoring the population status of large, canopy emergent trees at all our sites due to their local ecological importance in terms of fruit production, leaf fall, air temperature regulators, homes to many tree-dwelling animals and epiphytes, and also as immense stores of carbon. Our objectives are therefore to use standard plot-based census techniques to study the diversity, density, size class structure, phenology (flowering, fruiting, leaf fall, etc.) and distribution of trees within and between sites, including the recording of GPS location of large trees for future monitoring using satellite imagery. Some trees are also permanently marked using aluminum tags. In addition, the Botany Team is called upon to get intimately involved with any tree planting projects that our field partners undertake from time to time.

As an intern (1-4 months), you will join our Forest Ranger Team and will play an important role in patrolling the boundaries of forest reserves, collecting data on potential and actual threats to the trees and wildlife within these reserves, liaising with local communities, other land owners, and government officials such as the ecological police. The rain forest of south-eastern Peru holds more biological diversity than almost any other region on our planet. We take our workshop participants from pristine lowland rain forest where biological diversity is at its most brilliant, along the controversial Interoceanic Highway to see some of the most devastating deforestation on Earth, and finally through the cloud forest to Machu Picchu to experience the highest and most spectacular altitudes of the Amazon and the breathtaking ancient ruins which lie within. The main focus of the tour will be the Amazon Basin where our participants can enjoy the unique opportunity of working alongside our partner’s projects in Tambopata which offer the chance to get up close and personal with a number of colourful rain forest species. The trip will end with a spectacular trek (or equally ‘breathtaking’ train and bus ride) to the World-famous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu.

As a volunteer or intern on the Medicinal Plant Team, you will get an opportunity to visit several native communities in the Madre de Dios region of Peru and assist the team with collecting information, imagery and video concerning community-use of medicinal plants, as guided by a plan developed in conjunction with the communities we work with. Having liaised and discussed with a number of native communities to identify solutions to some of the issues they face, one important activity identified was to help them document existing use of medicinal plants, how and why plant use varied both within and between communities, and to use this information and associated imagery to develop educational materials for the younger generations of the communities (who have had less exposure to medicinal plant use) and for short-term visitors such as local university students and ecotourists - which are welcome at some locations. One of the main objectives is to develop a set of photo guides (one per community) to assist the identification of medicinal plants, with text describing usage in various languages (Yine, Amahuaca, Ese’eja, Spanish, English), with originals and copies lodges with the respective participating communities.