BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 145
A TIME TO REMEMBER
She was evidently deeply marked by that event. In practical
terms, it meant she had to give up full-time residence at
Gombe. “We had to go: the authorities wouldn’t let us stay”.
But even without the abductions, one wonders how long
Jane and Hugo could have remained. Kidnappers were not
the only menace. They had a son, Grub, to bring up, and
Gombe is not safe for an infant. Jane had noted early on
that chimpanzees were omnivores. She showed me “Grub’s
cage”: a wire-netting enclosure, it was designed to protect
the boy, but was not a long-term solution.
Later, Anthony was to tell me how Frodo, a male
chimpanzee, once grabbed, killed and partially ate a village
woman’s child.
Next day, I took a trek up through the Gombe hills to 昀椀nd
a group of chimpanzees located by trackers earlier that
morning. “That’s Freud”, Anthony told me. “He used to be
the alpha male, but he’s been supplanted by Ferdinand. And
here comes Frodo, watch out!” I had put my backpack on
the ground and Frodo was out to get it. He had also been an
alpha male and was now making a bit of a comeback.
A mother and daughter chased each other around a tree.
Groups of chimpanzees called to each other across the
clearing, “pant-hooting”. The alpha male shook the trees
and the females submitted to his will. “If they don’t come at
once”, said Anthony, “Ferdinand will beat them up”.
When we met up with Jane, we gave her a full account of
the day’s events. The last chimpanzee of those she 昀椀rst
met in 1960 died three years ago, so she has known all 106
of the current Gombe chimpanzees since their birth. Her
thinking about her extended family has evolved over the
years. If she ever idealised them, she has moved on. She has
witnessed terrible internecine 昀椀ghting, as one group all but
obliterated another. She watched a deadly rampage as one
female took her daughter on a killing spree, murdering and
devouring any infant chimpanzees they came across.
It would be more than a personal tragedy. Goodall is still
desperately needed, not just in Tanzania, but in the wider
world. While we were in Gombe, the US announced a
grant of $5.5m to her institute, to support community
development in more than a score of villages, extensive
forest regeneration and corridors linking Gombe with
other areas with important wildlife populations including
chimpanzees. The new grant is intended to build on,
and to expand, JGI’s programme of community-based
conservation, known as TACARE (Lake Tanganyika
Catchment Reforestation and Education).
“It has changed the attitude of every village around
Gombe”, Jane said. Local people are eager to protect the
animals they now view as “their” chimpanzees from the
bushmeat trade. The culmination of her life’s work lies in
mobilising rising generations. Twenty-one years ago, sitting
with young Tanzanians on the terrace of her house in Dar
es Salaam, she conceived the idea of the Roots and Shoots
programme, aimed at encouraging children all over the
world to develop their own clubs and associated projects.
Today it has a network of tens of thousands of participants
in more than 100 countries. And she continues to campaign
with evangelical zeal.
That night at dinner, she said: “Think of the most beautiful
tree you know. Then think of how that tree began. When
little shoots try to reach the sunlight, they can break through
the cracks in the wall. Actually, they can bring the wall
down”.
We all knew what Dr Jane Goodall CBE meant. We raised
our glasses. “Happy 50th anniversary, Jane,” we chorused.
When we told her that Frodo had charged my backpack,
she shook her head. “I’m afraid to go out now if Frodo’s
around. He makes a beeline for me and tries to knock me
down. He almost killed me once, dragging me to the edge
of a cliff and pushing me over. Mind you, I think he knew
there were trees that would block my fall”.
Despite such fears for her safety, even today she insists on
walking the hills alone, hour after hour. I remarked that
nobody wants to hear on the news that she is dead. She
smiled. “It would be quite a story, wouldn’t it? I wonder
what it would do for the cause of conservation, ‘Jane
Goodall killed by chimpanzee!’”
The Jane Goodall Institute is at
www.janegoodall.org.uk/
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