03/08/2025
Recently, Jane is back to where so much of her landmark conservation work began: Gombe, Tanzania! Gombe isn't just the site of Jane's famous chimpanzee studies: it's also where JGI's community-led approach to conservation, Tacare, began.
In the late 1980s, Dr. Jane Goodall flew over Gombe National Park and was met with a devastating sight. When she began her research in 1960, Gombe was part of a vast forest belt stretching across equatorial Africa. But from the plane, she looked down on a lone patch of greenโthe parkโsurrounded by barren, over-farmed hills.
Local communities, struggling to survive, had cut down trees for farmland, charcoal, and income. Without tree cover, the soil eroded into the lake, water sources dwindled, and women were forced to travel farther for essential resources.
"That's when it hit me that unless we could help people find ways of making a living without destroying their environment, we could not hope to protect chimpanzees, their forests, or anything else. And so, the idea for Tacare began." โ Dr. Jane Goodall
That moment sparked Tacare, JGIโs community-led conservation approach that facilitates local people to own and drive both development and conservation decisions on their lands to improve the lives of people, animals and the environment. Tacare is now one of the most comprehensive community-led conservation programs in Africa! ๐ฟ
๐ Learn more about Tacare: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/224d6e0f2699413fa2a789eee37f0b75/?ekf
๐ธ JGI/Merlin Van Lawick
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