by Jane Goodall
Dr. Lilian Pintea (left), the JGI director of conservation science, with a representative of the Mwamgongo village near Gombe’s northern boundary and Amani Kingu of JGI-TACARE, assesses the potential usefulness of one-meter satellite images for participatory mapping of village landscapes in Africa.
Fifty years after Jane’s landmark observations of chimpanzees fishing for termites, researchers are still studying insect-eating at Gombe. Here, graduate student Robert O’Malley of the University of Southern California holds a vial of siafu ants, another chimpanzee food, which were collected as part of an insect survey.
During her early years at Gombe, Jane drew sketches in her notebook to illustrate chimpanzee termite-fishing; today, O’Malley uses a video camera to document differences in style and efficiency between individual chimps.
Caretakers at chimpanzee sanctuaries often become surrogate family members to orphans who were stolen from their mothers—providing physical comfort, care, and socialization.
A caretaker holds an orphan chimpanzee at the Ngamba Island Sanctuary.
SECTION 4
A NEW VISION
THERE WERE ONCE BETWEEN ONE AND TWO MILLION CHIMPANZEES, SOME LIVING IN THE FORESTS OF TANZANIA, BURUNDI, AND UGANDA, WITH THE MOST SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS IN THE VAST RAIN FORESTS OF THE CONGO BASIN AND INTO WEST AFRICA. BUT LOGGING COMPANIES INVADED THE CHIMPANZEES’ HABITAT, OPENING UP AND BUILDING ROADS THROUGH PRISTINE FORESTS. SLOWLY BUT STEADILY, THE CONTINENT’S EVER-GROWING HUMAN POPULATION TOOK OVER THE VIRGIN LAND.
A logging truck hauls cut trees and bags of bushmeat from deep within an African forest. Logging roads have opened the forest interiors to poachers and bushmeat hunters.
Farm plots on the steep, deforested hillsides north of Gombe National Park
THEY CHOPPED TREES FOR FIREWOOD, CLEARED UNDERGROWTH FOR SUBSISTENCE FARMLAND, HUNTED FOREST ANIMALS TO SELL THEIR MEAT AT MARKETS, AND TOOK LIVING INFANT APES—GORILLAS AND BONOBOS, AS WELL AS CHIMPANZEES—FROM THEIR DEAD MOTHERS’ ARMS TO SELL FOR ENTERTAINMENT, MEDICAL RESEARCH, OR AS PETS. TODAY, THERE ARE PERHAPS AS FEW AS THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND CHIMPANZEES LEFT IN THE WILD. MANY OF THESE ARE IN SMALL, FRAGMENTED PATCHES OF FOREST, WITH LITTLE HOPE OF LONG-TERM SURVIVAL.
When Jane realized the extent to which chimpanzees across Africa were endangered, she made a decision that would change her life forever. She would leave the solitude and beauty of the Gombe forest and the chimpanzees that she loved almost like family. Using the fame and recognition she had gained from her National Geographic articles and documentaries, Jane would address government officials and conferences to raise awareness of the plight of our closest living relatives. And she would seek ways to raise money to help in the fight to save them. Jane’s home in Gombe became not a base but a brief getaway between tours, a place to replenish her energy and gain inspiration to continue her campaign to help the chimpanzees and protect their habitat. Though she still monitors the research, Jane had to relinquish the day-to-day responsibilities to others.
Two infant chimpanzees in burlap containers that were confiscated from smugglers in Uganda
By 1994, Gombe was under siege from the growing village populations that surround it on three sides. The lush green forest stood out like a tiny island amid the barren hills, the trees long ago cut by villagers in search of virgin soil for cultivation and building materials. Without the protection of trees, the precious topsoil washed down the steep hills into the lake, stripping the ground of fertility, polluting the once-clear waters, and endangering families with the terrible threat of mudslides.
A villager waters seedlings in his tree nursery in the village of Zashe, Tanzania. As part of a TACARE project, he cares for the plants that have been given to him and is able to sell them when they are ready for planting.
Schoolchildren near the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda
Clearly, to be effective, any effort to save Gombe would have to address poverty and other deeply rooted human problems. As Jane puts it, “How can we even try to save the chimpanzees and forests if the people are so obviously struggling to survive?” Under the auspices of JGI, she initiated the TACARE (pronounced “take care”) program, and a powerful force for conservation was born.
TACARE’s community-centered conservation activities seek to preserve and restore the environment while helping villagers meet basic needs, such as education, health care, clean water, and arable land. Jane insisted on a participatory model, and that has defined the program throughout its development. The villagers were approached not by white people from outside, but by a team of carefully chosen Tanzanians familiar with the area. The TACARE staff asked the communities to identify their most urgent needs. Right from the start, the local people bought into TACARE. “By linking conservation to poverty alleviation,” Jane says, “we’ve seen tangible results—whether a new forest plot or a mother newly able to afford school uniforms and books for her children.” The program has helped create hope for thousands of families around Gombe.
A woman waters plants in a TACARE tree nursery near Kigoma, Tanzania.
Since 2003, JGI has initiated similar projects in the largely pristine Masito-Ugalla Ecosystem south of Gombe National Park, in the Maiko-Tayna-Kahuzi-Biega Landscape in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the Tchimpounga Reserve in the Republic of the Congo, and at JGI’s new Mount Otzi Program in Uganda. Supporters of JGI’s efforts include the U.S. Agency for International Development, foundations, as well as other donors with in-kind technological contributions.
In 2006, JGI built on twelve years of experience with the TACARE program to design a larger and more comprehensive conservation initiative focused on restoring forest around Gombe. The Greater Gombe Ecosystem program blends TACARE community projects with conservation and land-use planning facilitated by geographic information systems mapping and analysis. It’s an exciting initiative: JGI scientists meet with villagers, and together they pore over satellite maps and discuss how the forest has dwindled over the decades, how wildlife and people use the land now, and what might be the best use of given areas—including conservation—in the future.
A woman uses a fuel-saving stove, as she was taught to do by TACARE staff.
Now that TACARE has installed a sanitary water system in the village of Kasuku, women such as Amena Hassan no longer spend up to eight hours a day fetching water.
Dario Merlo, director of JGI’s projects in the North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, shows pictures of chimpanzees to children in the village of Kasugho.
Coffee beans are drying in the sun. Small-scale farmers who live on Gombe’s border are encouraged to grow a coffee-bean variety that prefers shade, thus preserving the forest canopy and chimpanzee habitat. Through assistance from JGI TACARE, the beans were chosen by the Green Mountain Coffee Company for their Gombe Reserve Coffee.
TACARE
THE KIGOMA REGION OF WESTERN TANZANIA HAS THE SECOND-HIGHEST YEARLY DEFORESTATION RATE IN THE COUNTRY.
The shocking deforestation seen along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika from Kigoma to the Burundi border (and beyond) began in the 1970s, but was first noticed by Jane in the early 1990s. Suddenly, it seemed, the trees were gone. The presence of thousands of refugees from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with the rapidly growing local population, were putting an insupportable demand on the natural resources, as forests were cleared for farming, building, and domestic uses.
JGI established the TACARE project in October 1994 to provide alternate and improved means of survival for people who live on the margins of the forest. Through education, microcredit opportunities, health care, and support, TACARE helps women of the Kigoma region provide a better future for their families—and, in turn, a more promising future for the environment.
THE GOALS OF TACARE
• Arrest the rapid degradation of land in the Kigoma region
• Improve the standard of living of the villagers by providing training and resources
for growing fruit trees and other high-value crops
• Promote reforestation
• Curb soil erosion
• Provide conservation education to the local population
• Improve skills, education, and self-esteem of women
• Provide primary health care, AIDS education, and family planning services, in cooperation with regional medical offices
TACARE program manager Mary Mavanza talks with village women about TACARE programs to improve health and promote sustainable development.
NEW TOOLS FOR CHIMP RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION
CHIMPANZEE POPULATIONS SUCH AS GOMBE’S MUST COEXIST WITH GROWING HUMAN POPULATIONS IN A SHARED LANDSCAPE.
Careful land-use planning can help bridge the two sets of needs. It can promote long-term survival of chimpanzees and better lives for impoverished human communities. But how can we ensure land-use plans are based on relevant, objective, and up-to-date information such as the actual chimpanzee distribution, habitat use, and ranging patterns?
Geographic information systems (GIS) technology is an invaluable asset, allowing Jane’s teams to map chimpanzee presence and predict potential distribution and abundance, survey natural resources, and track human threats, such as settlements, farms, and other land uses.
Coupled with high-resolution satellite images, GIS data and maps can give insight into habitat loss and human activities over time. “Satellite imagery, GIS, and GPS have revolutionized the way we collect, analyze, and present information on forests, chimpanzees, and land use at the landscape scale. The latest satellite technology, such as QuickBird, allows us to map every tree, house, and footpath,” says Dr. Lilian Pintea, the Jane Goodall Institute’s director of conservation science.
The images themselves can be brought right into villages to facilitate participatory mapping and recording of local knowledge. Local people have been able to map their houses, streams, footpaths, and sacred areas. One woman was able to identify not only her field but also the tree under which she places her baby in the shade while farming. At the same time, the satellite imagery and maps are providing a unifying geographic framework where scientific and traditional knowledge can be combined. “Satellite images offer a common language, a way to communicate and share different perspectives on landscapes with people on the ground,” Lilian says.
The land-use plans that Jane’s teams have developed with villages in Tanzania include Village Forest Reserves that are protected buffer zones where certain extractive activities are allowed, agricultural zones, grazing zones, and human settlement zones. One long-term outcome around Gombe will be a forest corridor linking the forest reserves; it will provide a buffer and allow chimpanzees to move between Gombe and other forest patches outside the park.
This work is at the leading edge of conservation science and practice. Goodall and Pintea have made presentations about JGI’s remote-sensing and GIS projects to interested audiences around the world, including preeminent mapping/GIS forums and technology leaders such as ESRI, DigitalGlobe, and Google Earth Outreach—all of which have been major contributors to JGI’s efforts.
A satellite image shows the deforestation outside of Gombe’s borders.
A woman in the village of Kasuku, Tanzania, at the inauguration of a TACARE tree-planting campaign
Jane Goodall standing beside George Strunden, the JGI vice president of Africa programs, who helped develop the idea for TACARE with Jane.
Children in the village of Kasugho in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
A village in the Greater Gombe Ecosystem where JGI TACARE provides assistance
Sanctuaries in Africa
During Jane’s years at Gombe, she had heard of the many chimpanzees kept as pets in the homes of expats or sold at village markets. And in 1990, she saw firsthand a tiny, frightened orphan, stolen from his mother by the hunters who had killed her for bushmeat.
“For years I have talked about the pitiful plight of infant chimpanzees who are sold in native markets,” Jane says. “Now I have seen this with my own eyes. He was about one and a half years old, tied, by a short piece of rope, to the top of a chicken mesh [cage]. The trees overhead cast a little shade, but it was swelteringly hot and he was apathetic, dehydrated, and sweating. When I bent over him, he reached a gentle hand to touch my face. It is not legal to sell chimpanzees in this way in Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of the Congo]—not without all the proper permits. Yet he was brazenly exhibited right outside the American Cultural Center (in Kinshasa, Zaire). We knew we could not leave him there. Nor could we buy him, thus encouraging the trade.”
This young chimpanzee, named Little Jay, was to launch yet another arm of the Jane Goodall Institute—one that was tasked with working on behalf of captive chimps. Because it is illegal to sell chimpanzees in range countries, Jane’s first step was to encourage the governments to enforce their laws. To do this, government officials must confiscate the chimpanzees, showing poachers and traders there is no money to be made in this illegal venture. But once the authorities have the chimpanzees in their custody, the chimpanzees need a home. Without the appropriate rehabilitation and socialization, a captured orphan chimpanzee can’t be returned to the wild because it lacks the skills needed to survive—skills it would have learned from its mother. And because chimpanzees are also very social within their communities, but territorial when dealing with outsiders, a lone chimpanzee placed in an unfamiliar forest would surely be killed.
The solution, therefore, was to provide a safe haven, a sanctuary where chimpanzees could be rehabilitated and live in peace—in the company of other orphaned chimpanzees. With the cooperation of the Burundi government and the assistance of the U.S. ambassador to Burundi, Dan Phillips, and his wife, Lucie, JGI set up a halfway house in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, for chimpanzees smuggled across the border (mostly from neighboring Zaire). Soon, twenty chimpanzees were crowded into the facility. The hope was to create an appropriate sanctuary once funds were raised. Unfortunately, the political instability of this troubled country repeatedly put sanctuary plans on hold, and in 1995, escalating violence forced the institute to evacuate the chimpanzees. All twenty were airlifted to Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, two hundred acres of riverine woodland in central Kenya, near the foot of Mount Kenya, where, at last, they could climb trees, build nests, and move freely.
In 1998 JGI opened the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, which is managed now by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust on Ngamba Island, a hundred-acre rainforest paradise in Lake Victoria near Entebbe, Uganda. The sanctuary is a model of its kind, with a thriving educational program that includes forest walks during which visitors interact with infant chimpanzees on short, guided treks through the forest.
While visiting a market in the Congo, Jane saw a tiny infant chimpanzee tied to a cage in the hot sun. He looked nearly dead. Jane knew she needed to find a way to rescue him. With the intervention of the American ambassador and the minister of the environment, the chimp, whom she named Little Jay, was rescued. He became the first of hundreds of rescued chimps who now live in sanctuaries in Africa.
Another sanctuary, the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center, is situated in a forested area of about sixty-five acres near Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo. Built initially with the help of Conoco Inc., it was opened in 1992. The number of orphans arriving at the sanctuary, always traumatized and often wounded, has grown steadily. By 2010, more than 140 chimpanzees had been housed and cared for there. They ranged in age from less than one year to full-grown. Undoubtedly the most famous resident of Tchimpounga was Gregoire, whom Jane first met in 1990 when he was an emaciated, almost hairless chimpanzee who’d been imprisoned in a lonely cage in a Brazzaville zoo since 1944. Gregoire was transferred to the sanctuary in 1997 during the civil war, while heavy fighting was occurring in the capital. He lived the rest of his life at Tchimpounga and was at least sixty-five years old when he died in December 2008
.
Jane also lent her support to the creation of a sanctuary and ecotourist site in South Africa: the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden. Set on a gorgeous thousand-hectare reserve, the sanctuary is home to about thirty orphaned chimps. It was the setting of an Animal Planet television series that highlighted the efforts of sanctuary founder Eugene Cussons to rescue the chimps and rehabilitate them into social groups. Chimp Eden has greatly aided Jane’s efforts to educate the world about the plight of wild chimpanzees.
A caretaker at Tchimpounga escorts a group of juveniles to a forest patch where they will spend the day.
Jane and Gregoire groom each other.
TRIBUTE TO GREGOIRE
“DURING MY FIRST VISIT TO BRAZZAVILLE ZOO IN CONGO, I MET GREGOIRE,” JANE SAYS.
“I can still recall my sense of disbelief and outrage as I gazed at this strange being, alone in his bleak cement-floored cage. His pale, almost hairless skin was stretched tightly over his emaciated body so that every bone could be seen. His eyes were dull as he reached out with a thin, bony hand for a proffered morsel of food. Was this really a chimpanzee? Apparently so. Above his cage was a sign that read ‘Shimpanse—1944.’ 1944! It was hard to believe. In that dim, unfriendly cage, Gregoire had endured for forty-six years!