The mammal team will be responsible for undertaking line-transect surveys in the early morning, afternoon, and occasionally at night, as well as visiting habitat types not sampled by these transects in order to record the presence or absence of more habitat-specific species.

The bird team will undertake a combination of early morning point-count censuses of understorey birds along transects, as well as mist-net capture and counts of mixed-species flocks.

Peruvian Volunteers

 
A key part of the wildlife monitoring teams are local Peruvian assistants, mainly students who we will be recruited from universities in Puerto Maldonado, Cusco, and Lima. Sponsorship will be raised to enable as many Peruvian assistants as possible to take part in the Project, with the aim of helping them develop a set of skills which they would not easily be able to gain otherwise. This training will stand them in good stead to find paid work in the fields of ecological research, conservation and/or ecotourism after their time on the Project.

Volunteer Activities and Duties

The Fauna Forever Tambopata teams will spend an initial few days learning the theoretical and practical background to the field methods to be used. The herpetology team will have the opportunity to practice snake handling and identification techniques at the local serpentarium, whilst the mammal team will learn species identification by visiting a number of local people who have some species as pets, and the bird team will visit a selection of forest habitats close to town.

The details of the activities that volunteer research assistants undertake largely depends on the research team that they have chosen to work in, i.e. mammals, birds or herpetofauna.

Motorised dugout canoes will be used to access the lodges. Roughly 2 weeks is spent at each lodge and team members will be expected to share accommodation facilities. Some lodges to be visited provide rooms with en suite toilets and showers, whilst others provide shared facilities.

During those times when lodges are nearly or completely full, then project members will be expected to sleep in tents, however good washing and toilet facilities will be provided at all times.

Volunteers will be expected to help maintain their personal areas ordered and clean at all times, and in some lodges will also assist in laying the table at meal times and washing-up. Preparation of meals will be taken care of by lodge staff. Personal hygiene is important, particularly as communal lodge areas will be shared with visiting tourists (many of whom have paid a lot of money for the experience), and all team members will be expected to shower on a daily basis and dress appropriately.

Team members should also expect to be approached by inquisitive tourists and it is encouraged to converse openly with them about the research being undertaken. Questions that can not be answered by a volunteer should be directed to one of the team leaders or co-ordinators.

A component of the research involves interviewing visiting tourists, who spend between 2-5 days in the area, in order to gauge their opinions of a number of wildlife and tourism management variables. Tour guides and other lodge staff will also be interviewed to update our knowledge of how tourists are managed at each lodge and which tourist trails and areas of forest are visited the most. This will allow us to determine the trail- and forest-use intensity which will be compared against numerous wildlife variables.

During those quiet periods when field surveying is not being undertaken, or indeed when weather conditions restrict people to the lodge compound, volunteers will need to assist the team co-ordinators with data input tasks using the project laptop and hand-held PDAs.

Volunteers will need to put up with a variety of potential discomforts, including mosquitoes and other insects, mud, rain, and generally humid conditions! These discomforts however are more than compensated we think by the wildlife encounters to be made.