Earthwatch and Citizen Science: YOU count, YOU inspire, YOU change…the world.

More than 90,000 individuals have become citizen scientists with Earthwatch, taking part on thousands of research and conservation projects worldwide and contributing more than 7 million hours of field work.

There’s never been another movement like this.

And it’s never been needed more.

By attending, sponsoring, or making a donation in recognition of Earthwatch’s Annual Benefit in New York City you’ll help recognize and support the work that’s giving us all a chance at a sustainable future.

Earthwatch’s citizen scientist volunteers have many faces: students, families, educators, employees, retirees, and more. They share a desire to effect real, positive change for the environment, based in reliable science, while there’s still time to do so.

Volunteers donate their time, energy, and dollars, with their financial contributions covering the costs of their participation and supporting the scientists. Working as research assistants to award-winning scientists, Earthwatch volunteers get access to some of the world’s most amazing—and most endangered—places. They work with local communities and, in some cases, help support sustainable ecotourism. They work, sleep, and eat in the same conditions—whatever they may be—as actual field scientists.

Whether they’re measuring, counting, photographing, weighing, tracking, documenting, listening, looking, mapping, or performing some other task to gather critical data, Earthwatch’s citizen scientist volunteers are making a difference, delivering results—and hope.

Here are just a few of the recent achievements that could not have happened without them:

• The Costa Rican National Park, Parque Marino Las Baulas, was created in part because of the sea turtle data collected by Earthwatch volunteers. Before, poachers took nearly 100% of nests; now, almost all are protected.
• Eighteen new species have been discovered in South Africa’s Mkhambathi Nature Reserve, strengthening the push to enhance its protected status and improve its management policies.
• Key species have begun to recover in Peru’s Lago Preto Conservation Concession because of the changes in management policies brought about in part by Earthwatch-collected data.
• An artificial coral head partially built by Earthwatch volunteers in Bahamas has withstood severe storms and been colonized by marine plants, a hard coral, and some dusky damselfish, giving hope to efforts at large-scale reef restoration.
• Mongolia designated the Ikn Nart Nature Reserve as an Important Birding area and is establishing a ranger corps and ecotourism camp and improving its management plans.
• Blue-spotted salamanders have been documented for the first time in New York’s Harriman State Park.
• Greece’s Amvrakikos Gulf has a stronger shot at becoming a Marine Protected Area thanks to Earthwatch data on bottlenose dolphins and other threatened marine life in the region.
• Conservationists now know that endangered blue and gold macaws regularly fly beyond currently protected areas of the Amazon in Peru.
• Researchers working with volunteers in the Seychelles confirmed that the greater the diversity of reef-building coral species in a given region, the more able that regions’ reefs will be able to adapt to climate change.
• Sea turtle deaths from poaching have gone from as many as 40 a year to near zero in Matura, Trindidad.
• Volunteers have helped restore dunes and remove invasive Australian pine trees from 93 acres of a coastal zone in Guana Cay, Bahamas.
• Preliminary studies in Australia, built around a “scientist for a day” model, have shown alarming mortality rates among sea turtles are linked to marine debris, especially plastics, increasing pressure to protect local waters from pollution.