Responsible Treatment of Wildlife

IVI Volunteers are very passionate about ensuring that our animal placements do not support cruel animal ‘tourism’ practises. We would never recommend a project which is not aligned to our values in this area.

For example, the Elephant Adventure in Thailand was set up to sustain the elephant population and surrounding natural environment in a very remote region of Thailand well off the beaten tourist trail. Caring for elephants is a very resource heavy process. Volunteers assist the local people in caring for these animals in their natural habitat by gathering sugarcane and banana trees etc. This alone makes a massive difference by supplementing existing resources, which is heavily constrained by local economic issues.

Other projects such as sea turtle conservation Bali are designed primarily to support the local habitat and local community. In many developing countries there is a much higher incident rate of animal neglect, and therefore also a great need for volunteer assistance.