Illegal fishing, unscrupulous divers and pleasure craft dropping anchors are all issues facing the fragile seascapes which hold a diverse range of plants and animals. Increasingly the dive community is taking action to help preserve these ecosystems. The Posidonia Pipefish is one such animal which has suffered recently. Living a camouflaged life in Posidonia Seagrass meadows, they have been suffering from the loss of the plants which support them. Recent fishing controls in the Mediterranean were hoped to reduce the loss of this ecosystem, however increasing numbers of pleasure craft are dropping their anchors and destroying the Posidonia meadows. Divers are trying to help protect the species through research and awareness raising. You can see a full article here - Divers help protect the Posidonia Pipefish, with further links where you can find additional information....

  We recently received a thought provoking guest article on whether volunteering in local communities is a force for good. Whilst the intentions of the voluntourist are undoubtedly good, the effects on the local community may not be so obvious at first.  This article looks at whether volunteers become a financial transaction, whether the transient nature of voluntourists really benefits communities and projects in the long term, and if larger numbers of visitors have an overall negative impact on the area. We think it's an interesting piece, and would welcome your comments. Click here for the full article: Volunteering in Local Communities, a Force for Good?...

Ethical adventure consumers rejoice. Ok, you may not save the world in one shopping frenzy, but you can certainly help. We are delighted to announce a partnership between ourselves, Ellis Brigham - the UK’s leading independent outdoor sports retailer, and the Geotourism Development Foundation - a newly formed UK and US charity that provides funding to community tourism projects in the developing world. Yep, whenever you purchase anything at the Ellis Brigham online store (if you come from links on Much Better Adventures), they will put 2% of your basket price straight to funding the GDF’s carefully selected projects. These initiatives give communities the chance to build their own sustainable futures through tourism. Such projects include; Community Initiatives in Malawi Homestays in Mineral Spring, India Traditional Farming of Motag, Phillipines Food security and Agricultural Development in Yachana, Ecuadorian Amazon The one thing all these diverse projects have in common is...

Conservation’s Dirty Secrets, Oliver Steeds' recent documentary for Channel 4 Dispatches, certainly provoked reaction and, whatever else you may say about the production, it definitely provides food for thought. If you have not seen it yet, I suggest you do.  You can watch it here. We were shown how, while global conservation charities have been very successful at getting us emotionally attached to the world’s ‘prettier’ animals and raising funds, their actual conservation theories and methods leave plenty to be desired. Fast forward to the end, and the huge potential for ‘go local’ tourism to be an engine of conservation is made very clear. Give local communities a real value and ownership in protecting their ecosystem, and of course they will. Alienate them and treat them as part of the problem, and you just end up with more problems. Nothing new in this theory, but perhaps finally it is starting...

  Carbon offsetting is widely agreed to have many problems, and so we have been working closely together to bring travellers a muchbetter alternative. Finally, it is ready. With the innovative carbon calculator you can accurately calculate the carbon footprint of your last journey, be it by plane, train, car, bus, boat, or even a combination of all of them. If you want to take action to counter balance your emissions, it will suggest a donation that you can make to The Converging World. Donating to TCW brings carbon savings and social benefits above and beyond the traditional offsetting schemes available. Quite simply, your money goes further and works harder. The Converging World (TCW) are a UK charity building wind turbines in the developing world, and using the sales of electricity and its gold standard carbon credits (yes, they provide offsets too!) to reinvest in renewable energy projects, put money...

  To all at Eco Club, Join Us in the battle to uncover the local gems, and support ethical local businesses. We recently launched a campaign to encourage people to share suggestions of great local, ethical businesses they know about. If you have not yet done so, we would love to have your input. You can add it here: www.muchbetteradventures.com/joinus We add all suggestions to the site for free so others can get straight in touch. We'll check them out ourselves, reward the most ethical (or 'muchbetter', if you will) with featured free profiles, and offer sustainability consultancy to help others start on the road to muchbetter-hood. It's our own little fight against the impersonal, mass produced and green washed  'adventure' packages that are forever being thrown at us, like there is no alternative. With site traffic growing quickly, we are delighted to be providing an online presence for small businesses and communities...

Katrina from Alaska Ultra Sport introduces us to the wild wonders of the Alaskan wilderness, and exposes the numerous threats to these areas from mining. Perhaps a good adventure can help save the day? "When I first came to Alaska in 1996 I fell in love with this huge wild place. I moved to Alaska permanently from Germany in 2002 and have since guided people from all over the world into Alaska’s vast wilderness on multi-day hiking, rafting and kayaking trips. Alaska is one of those rare places in the world where true wilderness can still be found. Adventure and exploration in Alaska, paddling down rivers and hiking through remote mountain ranges, is all still possible without seeing another soul. Alaska is one fifth the size of the entire United States, and it contains two thirds of the land protected in the US national park system. Healthy populations of bears,...

Not so much an ‘adventure with purpose’ as a ‘set of adventures with a common purpose’ this month. Everyone has heard of the Annapurna trail, Mount Everest and other Himalayan hotspots, which draw thousands of trekkers and mountaineers to Nepal every year. Well, now there is a new trail in development which is likely to go straight to the top of many an adventurers to do list, and the people behind it hope it will to spread the benefits of trekking tourism to little visited regions of the Himalayas. The Great Himalaya trail, a feature of Nepal Tourism Year 2011, is set to be the longest and highest alpine walking tracks in the world. Winding it’s way through 4500kms of the world’s highest peaks and most remote communities, it links five Asian countries: Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan. We catch up with some of the trail blazers behind early expeditions...

Both Sky and BBC news recently featured reports of an Everest clean up expedition where “20 people braved the dangerous "death zone" conditions of Mount Everest” to clear the peak of rubbish left behind by climbers. Sky news calls Everest the “world’s highest dump”, with “more than 4,000 adventurers having scaled the peak since 1953.” The reports also featured a video of the trash collection by tourism officials in Nepal. Extreme Everest Expedition 2010, led by Namgyal Sherpa, went above the 8,000-metre mark to collect empty oxygen bottles, gas canisters, torn tents, ropes and utensils. The expedition grabbed the attention of the media as this was the first team to venture into the thin air and freezing temperatures of the so-called death zone. There have been many expeditions to clean up Everest over the years. Just how dirty is Everest and does it really need such massive clean up operations?...

Over the last two years Fieldskills, an adventure travel operator in Borneo, has considerably developed its rigging arm through Ropeskills Rigging, a specialist rope access provider working mainly on film and TV projects but also supporting canopy science in the tropical forests.  In the last few weeks however they’ve been working on a highly unusual but rewarding rigging job, building bridges for orangutans in the fragile Kinabatangan wildlife reserve, Malaysia. The wildlife reserve is bordered by plantations so the orangutans (and many other species) cannot cross the many tributaries to move along the river. Genetic mix is extremely important for the continuance of a robust population of orangutans and while small populations become isolated this is not possible. Conservation research has shown that by providing special bridges made from fire hoses, the orangutans can migrate along the river to find mates and dietary variety with relative ease. Camera traps placed...