IN THE SUMMER OF 1960, Jane Goodall, at the age of twenty-six, set foot on Gombe soil for the first time. Her mission: to further understand humans by studying the region’s wild chimpanzees. Her findings: that we as human beings have far more in common with the rest of the animal kingdom than previously thought.
Jane Goodall: 50 Years at Gombe retraces five decades of discovery, compassion, and action. Revised and lavishly illustrated, this updated edition of Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe (published 1999) is a compelling pictorial tribute to Goodall’s life, her studies of the wild chimpanzees, and her unflagging efforts to motivate people to better the world.
From establishing the Gombe Stream Research Centre, now one of the world’s longest-running studies of a wild animal species, to launching the Jane Goodall Institute and its global youth program, Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, Jane Goodall is a powerful example of the difference one person can make.
Published in 2010 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS
Text copyright © 2010 Jane Goodall
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Goodall, Jane, 1934–
Jane Goodall : 50 Years at Gombe / Jane Goodall.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58479-878-1 (alk. paper) 1. Goodall, Jane, 1934–2. Chimpanzees—Behavior—Tanzania—Gombe Stream National Park. 3. Primatologists—England—Biography. 4. Gombe National Park (Tanzania) I. Title.
QL31.G58A3 2010
599.88509678’28—dc22
2010004971
Editor: Ann Stratton
Design: Matt Bouloutian, Modern Good
Production Manager: Tina Cameron
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TO THE MEMORY
OF MY AMAZING MOTHER,
VANNE, WITHOUT
WHOSE WISE GUIDANCE THIS
RESEARCH MIGHT
NEVER HAVE HAPPENED;
TO LOUIS LEAKEY, FOR HIS BELIEF
IN A YOUNG, UNTRAINED WOMAN;
TO RASHIDI KIKWALE, WHO
FIRST INTRODUCED ME
TO THE FORESTS OF GOMBE; TO
DAVID GREYBEARD
AND FLO, WHO INTRODUCED
ME TO THE WORLD OF THE
WILD CHIMPANZEES; AND TO RUSTY,
WHO TAUGHT ME THAT
ANIMALS HAVE PERSONALITIES,
MINDS, AND FEELINGS
LONG BEFORE I MET A
CHIMPANZEE
FOREWORD BY MARY SMITH
A MESSAGE FROM JANE GOODALL
SECTION 1
THE BEGINNING
SECTION 2
THE CHIMPANZEES
SECTION 3
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
SECTION 4
A NEW VISION
SECTION 5
THE HOPE
ABOUT THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO CREDITS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF SEARCHABLE TERMS
DR. JANE GOODALL AND THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE DO NOT ENDORSE HANDLING OR INTERFERING WITH WILD CHIMPANZEES. SOME PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS BOOK SHOW SANCTUARY CHIMPANZEES WHO WERE ORPHANED AND RELY ON HUMAN CARETAKERS. SEVERAL OF THE HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS DEPICT DR. GOODALL TOUCHING AND FEEDING CHIMPANZEES. THOSE PRACTICES WERE LATER DISCONTINUED BY DR. GOODALL AND ALL GOMBE RESEARCHERS.
FOREWORD
On a rainy street corner in Nairobi, almost fifty years ago, Jane Goodall and I met for the first time. She and I, two young women born in the same year, had no clue then how intertwined our lives would become. Jane had recently begun her chimpanzee project at Gombe under the direction of paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Shortly after her astonishing discovery of tool use by the chimpanzees, she was given a small grant by the National Geographic Society to support her fieldwork. I was a National Geographic editor on assignment in East Africa, meeting with Leakey and his wife, Mary, to plan photographic coverage of their monumental work at Olduvai Gorge. Before I left our headquarters in Washington, I’d also been told to size up the young blonde woman working with chimpanzees in Tanzania. Perhaps, went the thinking, her project might eventually amount to something of popular interest for National Geographic. How accurate that thinking turned out to be. Jane not only became the world’s best-known primate scientist, she also became a living symbol for the preservation of our natural world and its animal populations. Her energy and tireless dedication to these very best of causes are legendary.
Over the years, when people learned I worked for the National Geographic Society, a question I could count on being asked was, “Gosh, did you ever meet Jane Goodall?” Well, gosh, I certainly did. I directed the production of her illustrated articles for National Geographic and alerted our television and book divisions to take a hard look at this unique scientist. The result? Three National Geographic books and four television films. Jane and I became close friends. One day, she asked me to serve on the board of the Jane Goodall Institute, created in 1977. Later I became its president. Long ago I asked Jane why she felt the way she did about animals, why she was adamant we should be kind to them. Her answer has always stayed with me: “We should be kind to animals because it makes better humans of us all.”
But let’s go back to the beginning. While I was in Kenya in 1962, the Dutch photographer Hugo van Lawick was assigned to work with the Leakeys. I also asked him to look in on Jane’s chimpanzee work at Gombe, not really expecting much. Meaningful photographs of wild chimpanzees had always been next to impossible to take, but as the chimpanzees began to adapt to Jane’s and then to Hugo’s presence in their territory, photographs began to trickle in to my office at National Geographic. At first, each time I reviewed another small group of Hugo’s transparencies, I shook my head sadly—nothing, absolutely nothing. Then slowly the tide began to turn. Incredible close-ups of heretofore unknown chimpanzee behavior started to appear, photographs that were used to illustrate Jane’s early publications and then her bestselling first book, In the Shadow of Man. Many of these outstanding shots are in this book you now hold in your hands.
How do you explain Jane’s tenacity, her total devotion to the things she’s convinced are right? You should have known Vanne Goodall, Jane’s amazing, delightful mother. Vanne, who lived in Bournemouth, England, went with Jane to Tanganyika, later renamed Tanzania, in 1960 when the Gombe project began. She and her not-yet-famous daughter endured incredible hardships, but typical of both of them, they stuck it out, and the research camp was established. Vanne eventually returned to England, periodically showing up wherever Jane happened to be in the world, including my office in Washington. “Mary, you’re not doing enough to help Jane,” Vanne scolded me more than once. “Let’s put more articles about her work in your magazine!” Far from resenting her comments, I welcomed them. She was never mean or quarrelsome, just pleasantly tenacious, with an impish sense of humor. Jane obviously inherited her own never-give-up spirit and her sense of humor from her late, much-loved mother.
And Jane has another invaluable quality: She can figure out in an instant any audience she might be facing—the person sitting next to her on an airplane, three people at dinner, a huge filled-to-the-rafters auditorium, or millions of worldwide television viewers. Her talent for communicating her messages is almost uncanny. Some years ago, a women’s political action-group in Hollywood set up a small luncheon for Jane with an eye toward helping her raise funds on the West Coast. We numbered about twenty that day at an ultra-chic Santa Monica restaurant—powerful entertainment-industry women, and Jane and me. I’d flown to Los Angeles for the occasion. The luncheon went well, with lots of movie and television chit-chat, lots of fascinating facts and figures. I wondered how Jane would shape her after-dessert talk. She folded her napkin, rose to her feet, placed her hands on the back of her chair, and began a brief, riveting description of her work with chimpanzees, her concern for animals, and the warning that we must care for our planet and everything on it or risk losing it all. She was brief, to the point, and very personal. When Jane sat down, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and many contributions to the Jane Goodall Institute resulted.
So what’s Jane Goodall really like (another question I’m constantly asked)? She’s extraordinary, one of the few world-class celebrities who, without question, fully deserves all the respect and adulation she’s received. Jane is a superb scientist and a genuine heroine in a world crowded with hero wannabes. I suspect you already know this, but if not you’ll surely agree by the time you’ve finished reading this remarkable book and studying its unique photographs.
–MARY SMITH
former senior assistant editor at National Geographic magazine
A Message from Jane Goodall
Fifty years ago, in July 1960, I began a study of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe National Park) in the British protectorate of Tanganyika (now Tanzania). I had not attended college then, and it had been difficult for my mentor, the late Louis Leakey, to find money for me. Eventually, though, he got a six-month grant from Leighton Wilkie, a Des Plaines, Illinois, businessman with an interest in human evolution. The British authorities had refused to let a young girl go into the forest alone—so my mother, Vanne, volunteered to accompany me. Bernard Verdcourt, a botanist from the Coryndon Museum where Leakey was curator, offered to drive us there. After some eight hundred miles, over mostly dirt roads, in his overloaded Land Rover, we arrived in Kigoma, a small town on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika.
What an arrival. On the other side of the lake, the people of what was then the Belgian Congo (which subsequently became Zaire and today is the Democratic Republic of the Congo) had risen up against the white settlers. Kigoma was overflowing with refugees, most of them sleeping on mattresses on the floor of a large Belgian warehouse at the port. The first night we three travelers shared one small room in the only hotel, but a Belgian family was desperate, and so we moved out and set up our tents, as directed, in the grounds of the prison. (It was well guarded and would be safe, we were told.) And we helped the citizens of Kigoma to feed the refugees, making hundreds and hundreds of Spam sandwiches.
It was two weeks before we could embark upon the last phase of the journey, for it was feared that the Africans in the Kigoma region might follow the example of the Congolese. But this did not happen, and so, on July 14, Vanne and I set off in the government launch, the Kibisi, on the twelve-mile journey to the Gombe Stream Game Reserve. The tiny aluminum boat that would be our only link with civilization was on board, along with provisions for several weeks, and Dominic Charles, who had been chosen to look after the camp and cook our food. Bernard had returned to Nairobi, convinced (he later confessed) that he would never see us again.
On arrival we were greeted by the two resident game scouts and Iddi Matata, who, we discovered later, was the most infamous witch doctor in the region. Fortunately he decided to extend his protection over the two strange white women. The cumbersome ex-army tent that Vanne and I would share was pitched near a small stream in a little clearing close to the lakeshore. Then, with about an hour of daylight left, I set off to explore the forested slope rising above the camp.
If I close my eyes, I can recall my utter joy as I sat in a clearing looking down at the lake shimmering in the evening sun. A troop of baboons paused to threaten me, barking at the intruder. There was the smell of a recent bush fire and the gentle falling notes of mourning doves. After supper around the campfire, I pulled my camp bed outside and lay looking up at the stars wondering if any of this could really be happening. Had my childhood dream actually come true?
During the months that followed, I sometimes despaired that our money would run out before the chimpanzees lost their fear of the strange white ape who had invaded their forest world—and that would be the end. But Vanne was always pointing out how much I was actually learning—how the chimpanzees made nests each night, traveled in groups of different sizes, ate fruits and leaves and flowers, and so on.
Vanne had to leave after five months—about a week before some twenty young men from Mwamgongo village, located to the north of Gombe, invaded my camp. They wanted to drive me away so that they could move into the reserve to cultivate the fertile valleys, and they were armed with pangas (machetes). Expecting to find me in my tent, they arrived at six o’clock in the morning—but, as always, I was already up the mountain. Thank goodness Vanne was not there, either. They cut down trees all along the stream and then left. I still remember the sick feeling I had when I got back and saw the devastation. Rashidi Kikwale, who had been appointed to accompany me into the field for the first few months, reported the incident to the authorities in town, and they came to fetch me in the Kibisi. I was forced to stay in Kigoma until the ringleaders, identified by Rashidi (who himself came from Mwamgongo), had been arrested and put in jail.
Then I returned to the forest, and soon after I saw David Greybeard, the first chimp to lose his fear of me, using grass stems as tools to fish for termites and even stripping leaves from a twig to make a tool. It was this breakthrough, the startling discovery that we humans were not the only beings to use and make tools, that prompted the National Geographic Society to make the first of many grants, enabling me to continue my research. Meanwhile, Tanganyika, which had been part of German East Africa until Word War II, made a peaceful transition to independence in 1961, under President Julius Nyerere. In 1964 it joined with Zanzibar to form the Republic of Tanzania.
In 1962, the National Geographic Society sent Hugo van Lawick to photograph and film the chimpanzees. This resulted in an article in their magazine and the documentary film Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees,