There are ways to work your love of animals into your next vacation. You can use a vacation to help animals in need, or spend your time off watching animals if you’d rather not go for the “hands-on†approach.
Volunteer vacations give animal lovers a chance to get up close and personal with creatures that they only see on TV or in zoo enclosures. If you’re interested in a volunteer vacation, consider lending a helping hand at organizations such as Farm Sanctuary, with locations in New York and California. Farm Sanctuary provides refuge to cows, pigs, chickens, goats, turkeys and the like. Volunteers perform tasks such as cleaning enclosures and get to spend time with rescued farm animals. Seeking a volunteer experience at a more far-flung locale? Encosini Eco Experience offers a number of volunteer wildlife conservation programs at game reserves and sanctuaries in Africa. Projects include feeding cheetah cubs and tagging fish species.
For those who’d rather just watch, opportunities abound to view animals either in their native habitats or in zoos. The World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, sponsors a number of domestic and international tours to locations including Wyoming’s Big Bend National Park and an excursion to Southern India & The Maldives.
If you want to go to a zoo, consider the Philadelphia Zoo–the nation’s first zoo is home to more than 1300 animals. In Washington, D.C., the National Zoo houses some 2,000 animals and is a leader in giant panda conservation and breeding efforts. On the West Coast, more than 4,000 animals call the San Diego Zoo home–visitors can also visit the Zoo’s Wild Animal Park to see rhinos, gazelles and giraffes roam in herds on 1,800 protected acres.






