How a Citizen Science Organization Aims to Preserve the Places It Brings Tourists to Study
Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, the Tamshiyacu Tahuayo Regional Conservation Area boasts enormous biodiversity—pink dolphins, rare monkeys, giant river otters, reptiles, and hundreds of birds and different types of plants. It’s also one of the most prominent examples of a government recognizing that environmental conservation doesn’t require keeping people out. That instead, it’s possible for humans to coexist with nature and help protect it.
And the region’s protected status is supported, in part, by research conducted by tourists.
Biologist Richard Bodmer has been welcoming visitors to his research station along the Yarapa River, on a strip of Indigenous territory between Tamshiyacu Tahuayo and another area co-managed by Indigenous communities, the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, to help track wildlife and collect other ecosystem data for decades. His guests arrive through a partnership with Earthwatch Expeditions, a tour company that connects people with scientists carrying out long-term research projects around the world and...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to wired.com. To see the full text click HERE
