The data being collected by this project is beneficial to the North West Parks board in monitoring brown hyenas and assessing the importance of populations inside protected areas. Project information is invaluable to the Hyaenid Specialist Group in assessing hyena populations and conservation status, and in highlighting population trends and the threats they face including carnivore-landowner conflict. This data is vital to finding durable solutions to these problems and will ultimately help protect this fascinating and threatened species.
There is an environmental policy for this expedition and sustainable practices are implemented wherever possible. These include addressing issues of resources, waste, water, energy, biodiversity, together with adhering to ‘leave no trace’ principles. This project employs local people and supports the local economy.
We are a not-for-profit international environmental organisation committed to conserving the diversity of life on earth and the world’s natural resources in order to meet the needs of current and future generations. On any one of our many projects around the world you are certainly not a tourist. You will be working as a field assistant helping world renowned scientists on real environmental projects, and learning about conservation issues. We give people the knowledge and the motivation to do something positive towards helping the environment, regardless of experience and background.
The data that you will help to collect will be used to inform conservation decision makers around the world. Since 1971 our research has led to:
- the discovery of 2000 new species
- the creation of new national parks, reserves and protected areas
- the collection of crucial data leading to better-informed conservation decisions
- over 80,000 volunteers contributing over 10 million hours of fieldwork
We are aware that many people travel to their project by air and recognise the impact of this on the environment. In an effort to minimise this, we have teamed up with an organisation that offsets emissions from your flights by funding renewable energy, energy efficient and forest restoration projects around the world.
As an environmental organisation we recognise that our day-to-day operations have an impact on the local, regional and global environment. We have an environmental policy which outlines our commitment to continuous improvements in our environmental performance. We have developed an Environmental Management System based on the guidelines and standards set out in ISO14001 and the Global Reporting Initiative, in order to measure our performance against agreed targets to deliver our environmental policy. These include: paper usage, recycling, responsible travel, carbon offsetting, green energy providers and many more environmental and social principles that form a continuous thread throughout our whole operations.
Main image courtesy of Niall Riddell

We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
