Green Travel List: Wildlife Watching

Steppes Discovery

Gloucestershire-based travel company that runs nature holiday, safaris, wildlife courses, walking trips and cruises in collaboration with conservation organisations in over 30 countries. It has raised over £750,000 for local, regional and international wildlife agencies and charities, which has helped build schools in Uganda, gather data which resulted in the Botswana Government changing their rules for hunting lion, and supported research in the Galapagos Islands for the Charles Darwin Foundation. Steppes was one of the first companies to include compulsory carbon offsetting for international flights. www.steppesdiscovery.co.uk, 01285 643333.

Naturetrek

Specialist tour operator that organises nature-watching holidays throughout the world, from botanical tours in Ireland and Estonia to tiger watching in India and tracking Grizzly Bears in Canada. As well as raising awareness of conservation issues on its trips, Naturetrek encourages guests to walk, ride elephants, join rafting and boating tours and spend time in bird hides when staying at the camps rather than joining long vehicle journeys. The company carbon offsets all its journeys (it has contributed £30,000 to the World Land Trust) and raises money for a range of environmental charities, including £47,000 for the Environmental Investigation Agency. www.naturetrek.co.uk, 01962 733051.

Inkaterra, Peru

Run by a local entrepreneur, Inkaterra showcases Peru’s incredible natural and cultural heritage and uses luxury ecotourism to preserve it. The focus of its work is in the protected cloud forest at Aguas Calientes outside Machu Picchu (whose gardens are home to one of the world’s largest collection of orchids) and at a private reserve (with 35 luxury thatched roof cabanas and a canopy treehouse) in the heart of the Amazon, which protects over 17,000 hectares of primary tropical forest from deforestation, locking in several million tonnes of carbon. www.inkaterra.com, +51 1 610 0400.

Click here to go back to the full Green Travel List