U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

A Strong Case for Wildlife Volunteering

Volunteer Working with Giant Tortoises in the Galapagos

Image source: Savingparadise.wildlifedirect.com

I’m a biology student working on completing a few requirements before I apply to graduate school, so for me wildlife volunteering is the most attractive volunteering option out there. I’m very sensitive emotionally, so I know working with sick children or in deeply impoverished villages is not the thing for me. I wish it was—I would love to work with people—but I know myself and I’d be a nervous wreck. Of course, working with endangered or imperiled animals carries its own emotional risks but somehow the disconnect—the inhuman eyes, the lack of a spoken language—helps me create an emotional distance. Also working with animals, especially in foreign countries out in the vast wilderness, has this Avatar-like new frontier appeal.

White Nose Syndrome: Volunteering to Protect Our Nation’s Bats

Little Brown Bats, Myotis lucifigus, with Geomyces destructans

Image source: Publicbroadcasting.net

Recently, I started volunteering to help study bats in New York State. They’re fascinating. They’re the only mammals that fly. They use their ears to hunt at night. Because of their tricky habitat and nocturnal nature, there is a whole lot we don’t know about their behavior. In fact, they are one of the world’s least-studied mammals. (Caveat: we’re talking living mammals and not counting the giant rat recently found in the crater of Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea.) My interest in bats has only increased as they’ve been hit with an unprecedented and alarmingly devastating disease: white nose syndrome.