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Financial support for field research in the natural sciences has been
shrinking over the past few years. At the same time, popular interest in
the subject has been growing. Put these two trends together and you have
the simple idea behind Earthwatch, a Boston-based charity that has now opened
its European headquarters in Oxford.

Scientists apply to Earthwatch for funds to study anything from shark
fossils in the Rocky Mountains of Montana to standing stones on the Scottish
island of Mull. Earthwatch then offers ordinary people the chance to participate
in those projects it approves, for a price. Two weeks spent working on Mull
will set you back £770; Montana costs only £516, but you will
have to spend more than this to get there. About a third of the price charged
goes on setting up the project, while more than half of it contributes directly
to the field costs, including those of the project scientists. The rest
runs Earthwatch.

Earthwatch grew out of an organisation set up by Robert Citron, head
of the division of short-lived phenomena at the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington DC. Faced with cutbacks in science funding during the Nixon
era, Citron sought an alternative. His wife suggested going direct to the
public for money, and from this idea, in 1970, emerged Educational Expeditions
International.

In Boston at about the same time, a group of professors at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology was worrying about the same problem: funding. These
academics, led by the late Harold Edgerton – the pioneer flash photographer
– and solar astronomer Donald Menzel, sought the help of Brian Rosborough,
an entrepreneurial American investment banker. Their main priority was to
discover where field workers could find the human and financial resources
to fund their research. The answer they came up with was simple: go public.
Issue a prospectus and ask individuals to invest their time and money. Rosborough
and Citron joined forces, and in 1971 EEI became Earthwatch.

Since then, almost 30 000 Earthwatch volunteers have contributed 2 715
000 hours and £9 million to 795 projects in 87 countries. In 1992,
Earthwatch plans to divide about £1.5 million among 140 projects.
So far, most of the supporters, and most of the scientists, have been American.
But early in 1990 Earthwatch opened its European headquarters in Oxford,
where Andrew Mitchell, zoologist and author, is the deputy director. ‘Joining
a project is rather like leaping from your armchair and diving through a
television screen to become part of the wildlife documentary you might have
been watching,’ says Mitchell, a former television producer in the BBC’s
Natural History Unit.

‘I’m searching for volunteers aged 70 to 17,’ he explained. ‘They could
find themselves rehabilitating orphaned orangutans back into the wild in
Borneo, or investigating the effects of logging in a Mexican rainforest.
I need skiers to trek across the Soviet taiga in search of CFCs, and mums
to act as midwives to endangered leatherback turtles in the Caribbean.’
He also seeks ‘botanists to record elephant damage in the Okavango; technicians
to test volcanoes as a source of thermal power; history buffs to help unravel
why the Mayan civilisation died out’. Mitchell reels off some of the 120
projects in 40 countries that last year’s volunteers could choose among.
He stresses that ‘no project requires any special skills of its volunteers,
other than a willingness to share the costs and labour of field research
with unflinching commitment, insatiable curiosity, and a lively sense of
³ó³Ü³¾´Ç³Ü°ù’.

Listening to Mitchell in salesman mode, you could be forgiven for thinking
that Earthwatch is little more than a glorified eco-travel agent. Not so,
says Mitchell. ‘Tourists need not apply,’ he insists. But can volunteers
be any use to science? Do researchers put up with amateurs only for the
financial help they bring? ‘I have found Earthwatch very useful indeed,’
says Sky Alibhai, an ecologist at the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College
in the University of London. Alibhai is studying the dynamics of wildlife
in Gosho Park nature reserve in Zimbabwe. Of particular interest are the
neglected small animals – mice, shrews and gerbils – that take up as much
space as the big game and often compete with them for food.

Volunteers for his project will tackle a range of tasks, from checking
traps and documenting animals and their locations, to tracking. For tracking
they use an ingenious technique called spooling: a light thread attached
to the animal pays out during the course of a night’s wanderings, revealing
where the animal went and what it did. You don’t need a degree in biology
to do that, just enthusiasm, which makes committed volunteers ideal. Alibhai
is well aware of the nature of his deal with Earthwatch: ‘Of course, with
the volunteers comes the funding, which is essential.’ But he believes there
is a lot to be gained by those who choose to work with him: ‘I hope the
50 or 60 volunteers who help me with my project go away with a better understanding
of the issues related to ecology and conservation of this part of the world,’
he says.

People bring valuable talents to the projects. ‘We had photographers,
artists, linguists, computer buffs, an ornithologist, a botanist and barbecue
experts,’ says Palmer Newbould. A former professor of botany at the University
of Ulster, he led a team of 50 scientists and volunteers studying the wetland
reserve at S’Albufera in Majorca last year. Architects bring new perspectives
to archaeology, pilots can use their navigation skills in a rainforest,
librarians help catalogue finds, and computer enthusiasts find new ways
of processing results.

The science that inspires such dedicated support is worthy of it. Researchers
apply to Earthwatch as they would to any other grant-giving body. Proposals
are reviewed by scientists in the appropriate field and if accepted are
published in a bimonthly magazine for Earthwatch members. This contains
colourful accounts of some of the research projects, and also briefly outlines
all the projects in need of help.

Members who want to know more before deciding between, say, Montana
and Mull, can send for a special briefing document. This 40-page book includes
the history of the project, its past results and its research mission and
goals. It also contains background information on the principal investigators
and staff, daily itinerary and volunteer assignments, field logistics, reference
maps, information about the area, and a bibliography of reading materials.
‘They’re romantic reading,’ says Mitchell, ‘and fascinating case studies
of real research. Many supporters who have no intention of going on an expedition
order them.’

Those who do go have diverse experiences, but Mitchell insists that
there are unifying factors, at least after the expedition ends. ‘Volunteers
return caring about the problems they have tried to solve,’ he says. ‘The
value to science is an expanded range of results and greater visibility.
The value to society is a growing band of better-educated, more enthusiastic
ambassadors for the planet, who influence the way others think and act.’

Volunteers return the compliment. Beverly Kniverton, who teaches physics
at Billericay School, the largest comprehensive in Essex, says her expedition
was ‘worth every penny. I laughed the whole time and cried at the airport
when saying goodbye.’ Kniverton had wanted to travel, but not without a
purpose. The discovery of Earthwatch in America offered it. She speaks a
little Spanish, so she decided to join Oscar Carranza’s fossil-hunting project
in Mexico last year. The work was not very glamorous: ‘There was a lot of
breaking up rocks,’ she said, ‘as if we were in a chain gang, which sounds
hard but it was a lot of fun.’ Carranza wanted vast numbers of whole specimens
for statistical analysis, so his team was digging in very rich fossil beds.
At first they kept every relic they found, but that soon changed. ‘We’d
come across them so often,’ Kniverton recalls, ‘that we would throw them
away if they had just a little chip on them.’

Detailed conclusions have yet to emerge from Carranza’s analysis, but
one discovery stands out in Kniverton’s memory. She helped to uncover the
skeleton of a 100 000-year-old horse, the oldest fossil horse ever found
in Mexico. ‘That really made it all worthwhile.’ Was it, though, any more
than an expensive holiday? ‘It doesn’t help me to teach physics,’ she admits,
‘not directly. But it makes me a more interesting person. Every teacher
needs time to keep themselves educated. We need to be fresh. That’s very
important. But the most valuable part was enthusing my students when I got
back to the classroom.’

By turning one teacher on to the pain and joy of field work, Earthwatch
reckons it reaches many more children than it could directly. This year
it has donated £20 000 in awards through its Earthwatch Fellowship
scheme, which enables teachers and students to gain direct experience of
their subjects. Earthwatch Europe plans, with the help of The Prince’s Trust,
to expand this scheme to include disadvantaged youths and representatives
from developing countries and Eastern Europe.

The scientists benefit. The volunteers benefit. Perhaps society at large
benefits too. It is certainly hard to find anyone who has anything bad to
say about Earthwatch, but the organisation is not resting on its laurels.
As well as reacting to the proposals it receives from researchers, Earthwatch
Europe is also trying to stimulate research in areas it considers fruitful.
Guiding it is a board of advisers made up of leading environmental scientists
from around the world and chaired by Richard Southwood, professor of zoology
and currently vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford .

The current research at S’Albufera, a vast and fragile patchwork of
marshes and saltpans in Majorca, is a good example of this active approach.
‘Earthwatch is acting as a groundbreaker here,’ says Brian Walker, formerly
director-general of Oxfam and now director of Earthwatch Europe. ‘On the
one hand the reserve is a vital stopover for migrating birds on their way
from North Africa to Europe. On the other it is a resource which the Majorcan
authorities wish to see used by a larger proportion of the island’s visitors.’
Earthwatch, according to Walker, is applying rigorous interdisciplinary
research techniques, including environmental economics, in an attempt to
quantify all aspects of ecological change at S’Albufera. In this way questions
about how people can use the reserve are being answered in the context of
wider influences on this coastal site: global warming, changes in the level
of the Mediterranean, and the influence of agriculture. As well as helping
the Majorcans, says Walker, ‘the results aim to create a blueprint of the
methodology and systems that might be used for a series of global observatories
capable of measuring – and perhaps predicting – local, regional and global
change.’ This is exactly the approach called for by the UN’s International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.

The project in S’Albufera was first developed by Max Nicholson, doyen
of the environmental movement in Europe and founding chairman of Earthwatch
Europe. Nicholson points out that ‘the field sciences have become the Cinderella
of the sciences, due to decisions taken in the 1950s which led to the bulk
of science funding going into medicine, physical sciences such as nuclear
power, and space research’. He adds that although people initially believed
that part of the job of the field scientist could be done from orbiting
satellites such as Landsat and Skylab, without an army of ‘foot soldiers’
to confirm the images, these are largely useless. ‘The need has never been
more urgent for reliable results on which informed decisions can be made.
Field scientists are the people to provide them, and Earthwatch can help
them do this.’

Mitchell hopes that Earthwatch can, in a modest way, enable people to
do something about environmental ills and make good the lack of science
education in schools. But, he says, it also seeks to act as a bridge between
business, science, and the community. ‘There is a great need to improve
environmental literacy in business. Sending staff on Earthwatch projects
can do this.’

The first European company to do so in Europe was Peter Parker’s Rockware
Group, which last summer sent two young managers to experience first-hand
the effects of acid rain on the Bohemian forests of Czechoslovakia and the
conflict between biodiversity and basic development in Majorca. Jim Kelly,
in charge of training and development at Rockware’s glass division, particularly
values the realistic experience Earthwatch gave his managers. ‘They got
a practical understanding of real issues and real live situations that were
actually happening out there,’ Kelly confirmed. ‘It wasn’t a matter of listening
to a lecture from some learned person.’

Kelly believes that by taking part in Earthwatch projects his managers
gained an overview of the impact of business on the environment, which will
help them to make sensible investment and marketing decisions in the future.
More than 3500 people now take part in Earthwatch projects each year, and
while the experience may not suit everyone, roughly one in three returns
for more. Some scientists have received regular support for more than a
decade. Bill Waldren, an archaeologist at Oxford, who has been supported
by Earthwatch for 17 years, was one of the first. About 1800 volunteers
have worked on sites, mostly on Majorca, where Waldren and his wife Jacqueline
have been studying prehistoric Balearic ecology and culture since 1960.
Waldren says he has ‘nothing but admiration’ for Earthwatch, and insists
that there is more to its support than money. ‘A grant means you have to
hustle for labour, which doesn’t come cheap. With Earthwatch, you’re getting
not only support for the project, but also a good deal of the labour.’ He
considers the volunteers to be very accomplished and highly motivated.

He recalls a time when he was trying to study the teeth of an extinct
antelope of the Balearics. The Smithsonian Institution had taken some X-rays
of the jaw, but these were not very clear. That year, however, the volunteers
on his project included a dentist from New York City. He took the fossil
jaws back to his laboratory and over the next few months produced what Waldren
describes as ‘some of the most fantastic X-ray photographs of specimens
you’ve ever seen’.

Many of the scientists who have enjoyed Earthwatch support can tell
similar stories. The success of Earthwatch is evident from the way it has
grown into a global research organisation, but why has it worked so well?
‘Earthwatch speaks to the spirit of adventure and discovery in all of us,
and it is a chance to give science a human face,’ says Mitchell. ‘But beware.
Earthwatch can be an uprooting experience.’

Jeremy Owens, a 28-year-old manager with Ernst & Young, the firm
of accountants, knows that only too well. ‘Two weeks studying the eucalyptus
forests of Australia made me realise that accountancy just wasn’t me,’ he
recalls. ‘I’m now planning on a postgraduate environmental science degree.’
He could soon be returning to Earthwatch – this time seeking rather than
offering support.

Jeremy Cherfas is a contributing correspondent to Science.

* * *

HOLIDAY JOB OF A LIFETIME

Earthwatch matches enthusiastic, paying volunteers with scientists seeking
help with research and conservation projects. It also provides grants of
between £10 000 and £50 000 for field research in the earth,
life and human sciences. Volunteers must be members of Earthwatch, which
costs £22 a year, and can choose from 140 projects around the world.
No special skills are necessary; two weeks is all you need.

For example, the current programme includes:

Radio tracking dolphins, Florida, US. Long-term behavioural study. December
1991 to January 1992.

Resource use in Kerala, India. Life expectancy and mortality in a rural
community. November 1991 to April 1992.

Yucatan Maya kingdom, Mexico. Second season of excavations at Sayil.
January to February 1992.

Inside Lake Naivasha, Kenya. Balancing human and natural use of this
great lake. March to August 1992.

Yellowstone coyotes, Wyoming, US. Radio tracking and recording behaviour
at elk kills. January to March 1992.

Rainforest canopy research, Queensland, Australia. Exploring the biodiversity
of the rainforest roof. November 1991 to February 1992.

For an information pack, full project details, or a grant application,
telephone or write (enclosing a first-class stamp) to Earthwatch Europe,
Department 77, Belsyre Court, 57 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HU. Telephone
(0865) 311600.