Page 3 - Local Voices, Local Choices Excerpt

Chapter 1
The birth of Tacare
Jane Goodall explains the Jane Goodall Institute’s approach to community-led conservation
Many people are still surprised when they realize that I, “the chimpanzee lady,” have for years been working on a variety of conservation initiatives that have forced me to leave the
chimpanzees and the forest to work with local communities and to travel around the world—raising awareness about the threats to both chimpan- zees and people in Africa, and the effect of hundreds of years of human exploitation of the planet’s natural resources. In a way it all started when I was an animal-loving child, who spent hours out in nature watching birds and squirrels and insects in my hometown of Bournemouth in England. I had a wonderful and supportive mother who encouraged my interest, finding books about animals from the library. When I was 10 years old, I decided I would go to Africa, live with wild animals, and write books about them. This was in 1944, when girls simply did not do things like that; anyway, we had very little money and Africa was relatively unknown to outsiders. Everyone told me I should dream about something I could do—except my mother, who told me that I would have to work very hard, take advantage of every opportunity and then, if I did not give up, per- haps I would find a way.
As is well known, I did get to Africa, arriving in Kenya in 1957. It was the famous anthro-palaeontologist, Dr. Louis Leakey, who made my
1