This week’s dream: hands-on in the Amazon

For those concerned about the environment, any kind of international travel presents a dilemma, says Andrew Purvis in The Sunday Telegraph. It is hard to keep your footprint light. But in the Peruvian Amazon, an area ravaged by deforestation, there are ways for visitors to ease their consciences. The Inkaterra Guides Field Station, in Madre de Dios, began its life as a training centre for research scientists, but recently opened its doors to anyone eager to “experience the Amazon rainforest in an intense and scholarly way”, and to give something back to this fragile part of the world.

The first time your fingers lock “around the delicate, downy throat” of a rare bird, such as the black-faced ant-thrush – “no bigger than a starling” – is just one of many “David Attenborough moments” on this trip. It feels “wrong”, yet it’s the approved handling method for weighing, measuring and tagging birdlife. For visitors, the mornings begin at about 5am, and are spent combing forest trails in the early light, before the rising sun heats the humid air to unbearable degrees. With the assistance of scientists, visitors record in notebooks “the plumage, song and scientific names” of all the birds they observe, as well as their sightings of everything from tarantulas “the size of a large crab” and jaguars to butterflies and armies of ants “with fearsome mandibles” capable of carrying a bat.

This is not a “five-star” luxury trip: accommodation is basic and electricity is rationed to a few hours a day. But if it’s wildlife expertise you’re after, “this is the real deal”. The project also works with the human inhabitants of the Madre de Dios River basin. By “helping communities relearn traditional forest ways”, and devising new systems of sustainable agriculture, it has already protected some 37,065 acres of forest. A people who once “destroyed the forest” are now defending it.

Inkaterra (www. inkaterra.com) can arrange customised stays at its field station. Prices start at £250 per night for four nights.