Wild ways to spend the summer holidays

By COLIN MOORE

Want to do something different this summer? Join an Earthwatch expedition and you could find yourself searching for fossils in Mexico, surveying birds in the forests of Ecuador or recording manatee behaviour in Belize.

Or closer to home you could study frog populations in the forest streams in New South Wales, survey water birds in the Coorong in South Australia or study the effects of tourism on dolphins off the Kaikoura coast.

All these projects are part of the international field research undertaken by the environmental group Earthwatch.

Each year Earthwatch seeks 4000 volunteers to assist scientists and researchers to collect data for various research projects aimed at helping to build a more sustainable world.

There are 55 projects on the expedition calendar, which runs until July next year. They cover research on species, the environment and communities in Africa, Asia, North and South America, Europe, the Pacific and the Caribbean.

Earthwatch volunteers pay between $2590 and $3900 towards the costs of joining a project. They usually stay two weeks working in a small team directly with scientists.

The research locations are usually remote and beautiful. Accommodation is as diverse as the projects, from comfortable homes and hotels to a tent under the stars.

Projects for January to July next year include an elephant survey in Kenya, saving monkeys in China, improving child health in India and studying fossils in the Sierra Madre.

It is hoped the study of frogs in the central eastern rain forest of New South Wales will help to halt their mysterious decline. In the past 17 years, nine endemic species of frog have become extinct and another 42 are in trouble.

The decrease parallels a similar decline in amphibians elsewhere in the world and points to a global phenomenon. Possible causes are more intense exposure to UV rays from ozone depletion, a fungus that attacks frogs or some newly evolved disease.

Whatever the cause, the chances are that if it kills frogs it could also threaten humans - which is why Earthwatch scientists and volunteers are taking a closer look at the Aussie frogs.

Volunteers will work mostly at night, learn how to catch a frog and quickly weigh, sex and measure it.

Also in Australia is a study of the echidnas of Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

The spiny echidna belongs to the oldest mammal group having survived everything that 120 million years of global change could throw at it. It lays eggs like a reptile but keeps its young in a pouch like a marsupial. And it has a lower body temperature and slower metabolism than any other mammal.

The study of the dusky dolphins of Kaikoura is led by Rochelle Constantine of the University of Auckland.

Her study aims to determine whether tourists swimming with them is good for the dolphins, and if the practice is sustainable.

The volunteers' tasks will rotate between tracking dolphin movements from land and, weather permitting, taking data on dolphin ecology and behaviour at sea.

For further imformation on Earthwatch Institute projects contact Sera Blair, Earthwatch Institute, ph (00613) 9682 6828, or visit www.earthwatch.org