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Questions about how and why we travel?

Sunday, 01 February 2009 21:41

Travelling is in our genes and few of us would pass up an opportunity to see and experience new places. But there’s more to travelling than simply going to new places, there’s the question of how and why we travel?

Travelling can have a passive tourist style, a self-indulgent hedonistic style or travels with a purpose - travels that can change you and the place you visit. Of course some trips may contain elements of all three styles but the point is all travelling is not the same. I’ve spent the past year researching and writing a book on Wildlife and Conservation Volunteering (Bradt Guides, Feb 2009) because of a long felt need (tinged with a sense of guilt) to offset some of the damage we’re doing to the planet.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Living Planet Report, 2006 records how, between 1970-2003 our planet’s biodiversity fell by 30%. The reasons are complex, but no matter how we put it, the cause is invariably human activity. Essentially the root causes are overpopulation and our over consumption of the earth’s resources.

Since the 1980s we’ve been living on "ecological credit" - using up resources faster than the earth can replace them and blindly walking into an ecological credit crunch that will make the current economic credit crunch seem trivial.

Most of my travels during 2008 have been to places where conservationists need volunteer helpers in their work to save or preserve some aspect of the natural world. But apart from the sense of worthiness there are many secondary spin offs on the best-organised conservation projects. Volunteers get to meet and work with local people, get an insight into different cultures and get an in-depth experience with wildlife that no tourist excursion could ever provide.

The book I’ve just produced is a guide for prospective volunteers who want to get down and dirty with the natural world. It takes them through every stage of conservation volunteering, from the first inkling of what’s it all about - where you can go, what you can do, which is the best organisation, what is it really like - to finally packing your bags and setting off.

I hope to discuss some of these issues over the coming year and look forward to hearing from volunteers who have had good or bad experiences or have just got something to say.

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