Does this REU have something to do with orienteering?
Nope, not really! REU is 'research opportunity for undergraduates' - I'm running a summer research program in ecology for college students, and it's absorbing a lot of time. I did manage to sneak in some O - one of the teambuilding exercises we did was to send them on an easy score-O I set on the first day (at our field station at the Bath Nature Preserve). They had two hours to visit as many controls as they could, while also answering science questions relating to each control site, and listing all plants and animals they saw. It worked really well, though they had a fair bit of trouble with the navigation.
I would think that good map-reading could be valuable for an ecologist.