Research volunteers pay own expenses

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 35

Research volunteers pay own expenses

NIGEL MALTHUS

Leia Shepley is a bank worker from New York City. Pat Burwell is a retailer from Snowmass Village, Colorado. Bill Halliday is a retired United States Air Force and civilian pilot from Rochester, Michigan. Leslie Osborn and Debbie Amis are students, from Nebraska and California. They have something in common — they have all spent thousands of dollars of their own money to come halfway round the world to help a few scientists study dolphins off Kaikoura. They are Earthwatch volunteers, members of a growing organisation that funds scientific Gresearch world-wide by the simple expedient of asking nonscientists to help. Volunteers pay not only their own travel costs and expenses, but also a share of the cost of the research itself. On top of that, they do the donkey work in the field. It is the rough equivalent of paying for the privilege of being a galley slave, but it seems there is no shortage of applicants. Massachusetts-based, Earthwatch began in 1971 when a group of Smithsonian students were having endless frustrations in their attempts to get funding from traditional sources. It was their friends who finally came to the rescue, demonstrating the philosophy and sense of adventure which has characterised the organisation ever since. We will chip in with the money, they said, but only if you let us come along and help. Earthwatch now has 33,000 subscribers world-wide. It plans to put at least 2800 volunteers into the field in the coming year. Volunteers can be anyone aged between 16 and 85. One woman in her 80s is about to set off on her seventeenth expedition. The organisation has offices in Texas, California and Washington. D.C., and one in Sydney established in 1980. The co-ordinator of operations for Earthwatch Australia is a former Christchurch woman,

Hayley Anderson. She says Earthwatch wants to expand into the Pacific, and she would like to see an office in Christchurch. Visiting the Kaikoura project, she says: "One of the reasons I’m here is trying to get the scientific community aware that we exist, and that we’re interested in funding projects. “If we could get some more In this part of the world, it would be great because Americans love the idea of coming to New Zealand, and it’s fairly cheap for Australians to come over and do projects.” There are only two Earthwatch projects on the books in New Zealand, however, and both

are overseas initiatives. The Kaikoura dolphin investigation is run by Americans, while a West Australian team is working on restoration of the Edwin Fox at Picton. All a New Zealand scientist needs to do is draw up a proposal for a research project and forward it to Earthwatch. If it is approved, it will be advertised in one of the regular magazines posted to members. Scientists new to the scheme are often sceptical that anyone would want to volunteer time and money, but there are waiting lists for many projects, says Ms Anderson. "Probably our most popular is tracking orang-utans in Borneo. They just want to go haring off through the jungle after orangutans.” A suitable project can be virtually anything under the broad heading of science. Earthwatch has funded research into ancient Gaelic music in Ireland, and present day Infant nutrition in Zimbabwe. There are projects on giant clams in Tonga and subalpine meadows in Colorado.

The organisation is keen to get volunteers as well as projects from New Zealand. At present, there is only one New Zealander about to go on an expedition —- studying mating habits of lizards on a sun-bleached Island off Mexico. Volunteers normally spend about two weeks on a project, with possibly several teams of

volunteers coming and going through the duration of the research. Conditions can be primitive — those helping with Mexican lizards are warned they’ll sleep in tents, cook their own food and bathe “with the sea lions in the ocean.” But the reward is the satisfaction of doing something different, adventurous and worth while. “What it does for the volunteers is that it gives them the opportunity to follow an interest that otherwise they could only read about, because they’re nonprofessionals,” says Ms Anderson. Most of the five volunteers at Kaikoura have some interest in marine biology. Debbie Amis is majoring in marine biology at the University of Nebraska. She says it is her chance to see if that is what she wants to do for the rest of her life. "People might say it’s expensive (to volunteer),” says Hayley Anderson, “but when you consider that some people don’t bat an eyelid at paying $2OOO to sit beside a swimming pool for two weeks and get a suntan ... These ones are actually out doing things for a similar amount of money. They come away having met people from completely different walks of life, and have a load of fun as Well.” To Pat Burwell, the Colorado retailer, It is “one of my holidays. I like to have an active vacation. I’m not the type who can go to the beach and drink Margueritas.” A volunteer on a project looking at honey ants in the Australian Northern Territories will get a reward of a different kind. He discovered a new species of ant, unknown even to the local Aboriginals. It will now be named after him. Bill Halliday says he knew he wanted to get involved with Earthwatch when he first heard sketchy details of it before he retired from Japan Air Lines four years ago.

It took him another two years to find out how to contact the organisation, but he is now looking forward to an active retirement, doing two expeditions a year. For American volunteers, all expenses are tax-deductible, a major factor in Earthwatch’s success. New Zealand volunteers get no such concession, but Ms Anderson hopes that might change. Australians get tax deductions, but only on projects within Australia. New Zealanders interested in joining, or submitting projects, can contact Earthwatch Australia, 39 Lower Fort Street,

Sydney, N.S.W. 2000. Earthwatch’s other New Zealand project is aimed at the .eventual restoration of the Edwin Fox, the 135-year-old East Indiaman which lies beached at Shakespeare Bay, Picton. In its long life, it carried convicts to Australia, troops to .the Crimea, and frozen mutton to England before being moored at Picton as a coal hulk for 67 years. Teams of Earthwatch volunteers, led by Paul Hundley of the Western Australia Maritime Museum, began the long task of detailing the ship’s structure last summer. They will be back this January and February.

_ Helpers sought from N.Z.