extracts from a guide to conservation volunteering
Wildlife and Conservation Volunteering - the complete guide
Published February 2009
This book was over 18 months in the making, a labour of love rather than a profitable enterprise - but such is the way with things that matter. If I'd taken some Z list celebrity with me, gagging for any media exposure, no doubt it would already be in the bestseller lists.
It turned out to be far harder work collecting meaningful data from various companies than I had anticipated and I was amazed at how perturbed some were when I wouldn't accept their unsubstantiated PR spiel. Although the web is a great source of information - it's also a great source of disinformation. Taken at face value most of the conservation volunteer companies appear the same - all are squeaky green and solely interested in saving the planet - right!
But the more I looked into the subject the more I realised how difficult it was to find a really good organisation to travel with - not everything in the conservation volunteer garden was as rosy as companies would like volunteers to believe.
There's plenty of green-washing that needs picking through in what has become a big twenty-first century business. You might not realise that volunteering has become a multi-million pound business and I heard insiders using supermarket retail phrases like - stack them high and sell them cheap.
If you're planning on doing some conservation volunteering and want to get behind all the web-based glitz and spin you best read this book - it might just save you some money and it'll certainly make sure the trip lives up to your expectation.
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