Through a Window (2 page)

These mapping initiatives were introduced by Dr. Lilian Pintea, who was awarded his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and now works with the Jane Goodall Institute. He is passionate about chimpanzee conservation and is working with a number of organizations towards the goal of mapping the range and populations of great apes across Africa.

Village Partners in Conservation

Lilian Pintea has spent much time working with the villagers outside Gombe National Park, helping them to map their knowledge of village landscapes and to support village land-use plans (mandated by the Tanzanian government). Conservation efforts in areas surrounded by high human population density
and poverty can be achieved only after gaining the trust and support of the local people, and the Jane Goodall Institute is doing that through a community-based conservation programme that works—TACARE.

TACARE was started in the mid-1990s by George Strunden and Emmanuel Mtiti. Today it operates in twenty-four villages, improving the lives of the people through farming methods most suited to the degraded land, maintaining woodlots of fast-growing species for firewood close to the village, and working with local authorities to provide primary health care and improved water and sanitation systems. Women start their own environmentally sustainable projects through our microcredit programme, while scholarships enable girls to stay in school. We work intensively with women since all around the world it has been shown that as women's education improves, family size tends to drop—and it was increased population growth around Gombe that led to the devastating degradation of the land in the first place. We also deliver (through village volunteers) family planning and HIV/AIDS information.

In conjunction with the Tanzanian government we are working with other villages in a large, highly degraded area that we call the Greater Gombe Ecosystem, and an even larger area further south, the Masito-Ugalla and Mahale Ecosystems, where large stretches of forest still remain, home to many chimpanzees.

Leafy Corridor: Lifeline for Chimpanzees

The Tanzanian government requires each village to put aside at least 10 per cent of its land for conservation. And thanks to TACARE, the villagers are cooperating with Lilian Pintea and our land-use planning and GIS team to establish and map interconnected village forest reserves that form a forest corridor. This corridor is designed to provide both a buffer zone between the Gombe National Park chimpanzees and the surrounding
villages, and to permit those chimpanzees currently trapped in nearby remnant forests (surrounded by cultivated fields) outside the park to move in and interact with Gombe chimpanzee communities, as they used to do. This is how they enhance their gene pool. And this leafy passage is already growing. Early in 2009 I saw how the trees were already twenty feet tall in some places. When fully restored, the forest corridor will stretch from south of Gombe northward towards the Burundi border. Another corridor is planned to link the Greater Gombe Ecosystem with the Masito-Ugalla Ecosystem.

Roots & Shoots

There would be little point in striving to protect animals and environments if, at the same time, we were not also helping young people to become better stewards than we have been. Roots & Shoots is JGI's global environmental and humanitarian education programme for young people. It began in Tanzania in 1991 with a group of twelve secondary school students. Today (June2009)there are some ten thousand active Roots & Shoots groups in more than 110 countries. Members range in age from preschool children through to university students. An increasing number of adults are forming their own groups.

The main message of Roots & Shoots is that every individual makes a difference—every day. Each group chooses three kinds of projects that demonstrate care and concern for their own human community, animals both wild and domestic, and the environment we all share. Then they roll up their sleeves and take action. Roots & Shoots fosters respect and compassion for all living things, promotes understanding of all cultures and beliefs, and inspires each individual to take action to make the world a better place. What began with a handful of eager and concerned students in Tanzania has grown to a truly global movement.

Keeping in Touch

Soon after finishing
Through a Window
I began travelling around the globe, some three hundred days a year, raising awareness about the plight of the chimpanzees and their habitats and about the other environmental (and social) problems that face us today. I still get to Gombe twice a year—but for a few days only. There is a wonderful research team there comprising Tanzanian, European, American and even Asian researchers. Data collection continues, but I must make do with spending a few precious days out in the forest, recharging my batteries.

How fortunate that Bill Wallauer joined us to build up what has become a totally unique video record of chimpanzee behaviour. Bill became almost part of the life of the chimpanzee community, following some of its members for days. Through Bill's footage I have watched Gremlin give birth, seen the males patrolling the boundaries of their territory, observed a brutal attack on a stranger adolescent male, and felt close, once again, to part of all the tender, amusing, and sometimes tragic events that make the lives of the chimpanzees so endlessly fascinating. It is not the same as being there, but it is very much better than nothing.

And so, with the help of new technologies and despite the many changes, we are still amassing case histories and family histories of the Gombe chimpanzees. In the afterword that I have added at the end of this new edition of
Through a Window,
the reader can find out what has happened in the lives of some of the individuals introduced in this book.

Even after fifty years, there is still so much to learn about the lives of chimpanzees. Why are inter-group relations more violent at some times than others? How much information can the chimpanzees convey through their calls to others who are out of sight? Why do they give excited "food-grunts" when arriving at
some food sources, but not others? Can they somehow tell, perhaps by smell, who their paternal relatives are? It is my hope that our efforts to conserve these amazing creatures will succeed and that new generations of researchers will continue to learn from following the lives of the chimpanzees of Gombe.

J
ANE
G
OODALL
October 2009

I
ROLLED OVER
and looked at the time—5.44
A.M
. Long years of early rising have led to an ability to wake just before the unpleasant clamour of an alarm clock. Soon I was sitting on the steps of my house looking out over Lake Tanganyika. The waning moon, in her last quarter, was suspended above the horizon, where the mountainous shoreline of Zaire fringed Lake Tanganyika. It was a still night, and the moon's path danced and sparkled towards me across the gently moving water. My breakfast—a banana and a cup of coffee from the thermos flask—was soon finished, and ten minutes later I was climbing the steep slope behind the house, my miniature binoculars and camera stuffed into my pockets along with notebook, pencil stubs, a handful of raisins for my lunch, and plastic bags in which to put everything should it rain. The faint light from the moon, shining on the dew-laden grass, enabled me to find my way without difficulty and presently I arrived at the place where, the evening before, I had watched eighteen chimpanzees settle down for the night. I sat to wait until they woke.

All around, the trees were still shrouded with the last mysteries of the night's dreaming. It was very quiet, utterly peaceful. The only sounds were the occasional chirp of a cricket, and the soft murmur where the lake caressed the shingle, way below. As I sat there I felt the expectant thrill that, for me, always precedes a day with the chimpanzees, a day roaming the forests and mountains of Gombe, a day for new discoveries, new insights.

Then came a sudden burst of song, the duet of a pair of robin chats, hauntingly beautiful. I realized that the intensity of light had changed: dawn had crept upon me unawares. The coming brightness of the sun had all but vanquished the silvery, indefinite illumination of its own radiance reflected by the moon. The chimpanzees still slept.

Five minutes later came a rustling of leaves above. I looked up and saw branches moving against the lightening sky. That was where Goblin, top-ranking male of the community, had made his nest. Then stillness again. He must have turned over, then settled down for a last snooze. Soon after this there was movement from another nest to my right, then from one behind me, further up the slope. Rustlings of leaves, the cracking of a little twig. The group was waking up. Peering through my binoculars into the tree where Fifi had made a nest for herself and her infant Fiossi, I saw the silhouette of her foot. A moment later Fanni, her eight-year-old daughter, climbed up from her nest nearby and sat just above her mother, a small dark shape against the sky. Fifi's other two offspring, adult Freud and adolescent Frodo, had nested further up the slope.

Nine minutes after he had first moved, Goblin abruptly sat up and, almost at once, left his nest and began to leap wildly through the tree, vigorously swaying the branches. Instant pandemonium broke out. The chimpanzees closest to Goblin left their nests and rushed out of his way. Others sat up to watch, tense and ready for flight. The early morning peace was shattered by frenzied grunts and screams as Goblin's subordinates voiced their respect or fear. A few moments later, the arboreal part of his display over, Goblin leapt down and charged past me, slapping and stamping on the wet ground, rearing up and shaking the vegetation, picking up and hurling a rock, an old piece of
wood, another rock. Then he sat, hair bristling, some fifteen feet away. He was breathing heavily. My own heart was beating fast. As he swung down, I had stood up and held onto a tree, praying that he would not pound on me as he sometimes does. But, to my relief, he had ignored me, and I sat down again.

With soft, panting grunts Goblin's young brother Gimble climbed down and came to greet the alpha or top-ranking male, touching his face with his lips. Then, as another adult male approached Goblin, Gimble moved hastily out of the way. This was my old friend Evered. As he approached, with loud, submissive grunts, Goblin slowly raised one arm in salutation and Evered rushed forward. The two males embraced, grinning widely in the excitement of this morning reunion so that their teeth flashed white in the semi-darkness. For a few moments they groomed each other and then, calmed, Evered moved away and sat quietly nearby.

The only other adult who climbed down then was Fifi, with Fiossi clinging to her belly. She avoided Goblin, but approached Evered, grunting softly, reached out her hand and touched his arm. Then she began to groom him. Fiossi climbed into Evered's lap and looked up into his face. He glanced at her, groomed her head intently for a few moments, then turned to reciprocate Fifi's attentions. Fiossi moved half-way towards where Goblin sat—but his hair was still bristling, and she thought better of it and, instead, climbed a tree near Fifi. Soon she began to play with Fanni, her sister.

Once again peace returned to the morning, though not the silence of dawn. Up in the trees the other chimpanzees of the group were moving about, getting ready for the new day. Some began to feed, and I heard the occasional soft thud as skins and seeds of figs were dropped to the ground. I sat, utterly content to be back at Gombe after an unusually long time away—almost three months of lectures, meetings, and lobbying in the USA
and Europe. This would be my first day with the chimps and I planned to enjoy it to the full, just getting reacquainted with my old friends, taking pictures, getting my climbing legs back.

It was Evered who led off, thirty minutes later, twice pausing and looking back to make sure that Goblin was coming too. Fifi followed, Fiossi perched on her back like a small jockey, Fanni close behind. Now the other chimps climbed down and wandered after us. Freud and Frodo, adult males Atlas and Beethoven, the magnificent adolescent Wilkie, and two females, Patti and Kidevu, with their infants. There were others, but they were travelling higher up the slope, and I didn't see them then. We headed north, parallel with the beach below, then plunged down into Kasekela Valley and, with frequent pauses for feeding, made our way up the opposite slope. The eastern sky grew bright, but not until 8.30
A.M.
did the sun itself finally peep over the peaks of the rift escarpment. By this time we were high above the lake. The chimpanzees stopped and groomed for a while, enjoying the warmth of the morning sunshine.

About twenty minutes later there was a sudden outbreak of chimpanzee calls ahead—a mixture of pant-hoots, as we call the loud distance calls, and screams. I could hear the distinctive voice of the large, sterile female Gigi among a medley of females and youngsters. Goblin and Evered stopped grooming and all the chimps stared towards the sounds. Then, with Goblin now in the lead, most of the group moved off in that direction.

Fifi, however, stayed behind and continued to groom Fanni while Fiossi played by herself, dangling from a low branch near her mother and elder sister. I decided to stay too, delighted that Frodo had moved on with the others for he so often pesters me. He wants me to play, and, because I will not, he becomes aggressive. At twelve years of age he is much stronger than I am, and this behaviour is dangerous. Once he stamped so hard on my head that my neck was nearly broken. And on another occasion he pushed me down a steep slope. I can only hope that, as he matures and leaves childhood behind him, he will grow out of these irritating habits.

I spent the rest of the morning wandering peacefully with Fifi and her daughters, moving from one food tree to the next. The chimps fed on several different kinds of fruit and once on some young shoots. For about forty-five minutes they pulled apart the leaves of low shrubs which had been rolled into tubes held closely by sticky threads, then munched on the caterpillars that wriggled inside. Once we passed another female—Gremlin and her new infant, little Galahad. Fanni and Fiossi ran over to greet them, but Fifi barely glanced in their direction.