BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 144
A TIME TO REMEMBER
for Gombe’s chimpanzee population, but for other denizens
of the forest - baboons, monkeys, egrets, herons, eagles,
vultures… and, crucially, for the forest itself.
Last December Jane was in Denmark at the Climate Change
Summit. “A lot of things went wrong in Copenhagen - or
didn’t come right - but I think everyone recognised how
vital the forests are. I was with Chief Almir of the Surui
tribe from Amazonian Brazil. We were part of the SouthSouth Initiative, which trains indigenous and local people
to monitor their forests using Google Android cellphones.
This information goes straight up to a satellite. It will enable
them to prove they are indeed protecting their forests and
thereby qualify for international assistance”.
Frodo the chimpanzee
We journeyed across the lake to Gombe itself, joined by
a guide, Bernard Gichobi, and by Dr Anthony Collins, a
director of her institute, who has worked with Jane since the
1970s, but still manages to look after his wife and family
in north London. “It’s hard”, he confessed as the boat got
underway, “but somehow after so many years I feel more at
home here than in England”.
What an extraordinary journey it has been for her! The
26-year-old dragging up her boat on to the shore, with
“one ex-army tent, one pair of lousy binoculars and a
couple of tin mugs and plates”, has turned into a star of
the international circuit. Hectic as her life now is, she
doesn’t want to be known simply as “the chimpanzee lady”.
In 2002, Ko昀椀 Annan, the then secretary-general of the
UN, appointed her, with other notable personalities, as a
messenger of peace. She told me: “I was the only one who
actually showed up in New York for the ceremony”.
Lake Tanganyika is the second-deepest lake in the world,
containing 17% of the world’s fresh surface water. It is
bounded to the west by the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Over the years there have been frequent incursions, even
invasions, by refugees both from the Congo and from
Burundi. The signs of population pressure are obvious:
hillsides denuded of vegetation; dramatic gullies where
the exposed soil has been eroded from the hills in heavy
rains. At the boundary of the park, however, the change is
dramatic. At last you see the luxuriant sweep of trees that
you expect of a tropical rainforest.
Jane and Anthony were to stay in the house Jane and
her 昀椀rst husband, the photographer Hugo van Lawick,
built in the early 1970s. They divorced, and in 1975 she
married Derek Bryceson, a former RAF hero and director
of Tanzania’s national parks. Five years later, he died of
cancer, a tragedy that is still raw.
Stanley, Dr. Anthony Collins, Jane Goodall and Bernard Gichobi
I was staying a mile or two away in the Gombe Forest
Lodge, a privately run tented camp. Jane and Anthony
came up there in the boat. After sunset, we lit a 昀椀re on the
beach and opened a bottle of whisky. We looked out over
the 昀氀at-calm surface of the lake to the lights of a line of
昀椀shing boats, extending as far as the eye could see, and I
found myself thinking about the ripple effect of the Jane
Goodall phenomenon. The importance of Jane’s research
certainly helped to ensure Gombe’s designation in 1968 as a
national park. This in turn increased the protection not just
As the whisky bottle went round again, Jane remembered
the moment in May 1975 when the Congo exploded into
their lives. “It was the middle of the night. The kidnappers
came in by boat, parked on the beach down there” - she
waved towards the spot. “They grabbed four of the students.
They sent one of them back almost at once with a message.
The parents came out.
I think money was paid, because the next two were released.
I think the 昀椀gure was $250,000. But the fourth didn’t come
back for some time”.
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BOISDALELIFE.COM
ISSUE 24
