← TravelConservation · the method

Methodology · a living document

How we check.

One promise holds the whole site up: if we couldn't verify the work, it isn't here. This page is how that promise is kept — and how the keeping keeps improving.

Where a name comes from.

No operator writes themselves in. Names enter through public evidence, and every step between a registry and the field journal is recorded:

Certification registries Sweeps of GSTC, Green Key, EarthCheck, Rainforest Alliance and B Corp listings surface certified operators, with the source URL kept on the record.
Protected Planet (WDPA) The UN-backed World Database on Protected Areas supplies the protected places themselves — each record linked to its Protected Planet entry.
Documented programs The operator's own published records — hectares, rangers, revenue shares — extracted with the source attached, never paraphrased into vagueness.
A human gate Every draft is reviewed before publication. Rejected drafts stay out. Nothing auto-publishes.

Recommendations you can audit.

When this site hands a traveler to an operator, the hand-off itself is counted in an outbound ledger — who was sent, from which page, to which door. That ledger is how we can show operators real numbers, and how you can hold our recommendations to account.

Some outbound links may become paid partnerships. Counting never affects who is listed — vetting does. We are not a certification body; we read public evidence, weigh it in the open, and say so when we can't verify something.

The method is alive.

Checking travel honestly is young work. As better practices prove themselves, this method absorbs them — and every absorption is dated here.

The field journal → What travel costs & pays back → Field Dispatches →