Page 17 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

Local ambassadors: learning from and speaking for the chimps 15
spent an incredible three decades in the forest with the chimps. “Even though it is difficult,” he says politely, “I am doing this job because the founder, Dr. Jane, started the research because she had the ambition of building a conservancy, to protect the chimps, the forest, and everything in it.” Still active in the field, he has witnessed significant changes over the years.
Trackers Iddi and Samson study chimpanzee, Titan, in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Local researchers follow chimps daily, recording social, demographic, and behavioral data from the moment the chimps wake up, to the moment they build their next evening’s nest and go to sleep. Photo by Nick Riley, 2010.
“Today,” Gabo continues, “I can say that the chimpanzees’ situation is good. But when I started working in 1971 there were three groups of chim- panzees; however, the big group that was in the south has been decimated, it is no longer there. Now we’re only left with two big groups. Looking at how the chimps live now, it’s different from how they lived up until the 1980s—even their leadership and reign is different. Those of that era used