how supportive are the local people for preserving animals in Africa?
We’ve employed people from around the Gombe National Park since 1968 to not just be trackers and guides and things like that, but actually to help us with the research. We’ve gradually trained them, taught some of them to read and write, and now they collect sophisticated information. They use eight-millimeter videos also. They are proud of their work. They talk about it to their family and friends and most important of all, they care about the chimps as individuals. That’s why, even though this little 30-square park, I’ve said the long-tern viability is in question, the chimps there live their lives from day to day in safety. That’s not so in other parts of Africa. There are four field studies that I know, three in Uganda and one in the Ivory Coast where up to 60 percent of the adult chimpanzee population being studied has lost a hand or a foot as a result of getting caught in poachers’ snares. In all the 37 years at Gombe, one snare for one chimpanzee. Q: I’d like to shift gears a li
