ENGAGE – LISTEN – UNDERSTAND – ACT

The Jane Goodall Institute’s ‘Tacare’ Approach Puts People at the Heart of Conservation

Photo: Norman Jean Roy

In 1960, Jane Goodall – a 26-year-old British woman with no prior experience – began her groundbreaking studies of wild chimpanzees. Her discovery that chimpanzees make and use tools rocked the scientific world and forever redefined the relationship between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.

*Photo courtesy of The Jane Goodall Institute*

Beyond being a keystone species in their ecosystems, Dr. Goodall showed the world how remarkable and inherently important chimpanzees are. They are our closest living relatives sharing 98.6% of our DNA and many of our behaviors such as compassion and altruism.

For Goodall, her research sparked a lifelong commitment to understand and protect chimpanzees. However, a blissful life in Tanzania's Gombe National Park changed in the early 1990s, as the urgency and importance of conserving chimpanzees became crystal clear in an instant.

She was in a small airplane flying over Gombe. When she looked down, she was shocked by what she saw. Hill after hill had been stripped of its dense blanket of trees; they were completely bare. The home of the precious chimpanzees was disappearing before her eyes.

*Aerial oblique photo of deforestation in early 2000’s north of Gombe , courtesy of The Jane Goodall Institute*

The land was over farmed and infertile. Local communities had cut down the trees for charcoal or to sell to feed their families. People were struggling to survive. She saw only one solution: efforts to conserve chimpanzees and their habitats must happen through working with and empowering local people - not just as participants, but as leaders and stewards of their lands to achieve a sustainable future.

"There's no way we can even attempt to save these precious Gombe chimpanzees unless we could improve the lives of the people living in that last little oasis of forest." - Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace

91% of chimpanzee range in Tanzania is outside of National Parks

Chimpanzee Range in Tanzania

This map displays the core range and corridors of chimpanzees in Tanzania according to the National Chimpanzee Management Plan. The range in Tanzania represents the eastern most border of the entire chimpanzee range throughout Africa.

National Parks in Tanzania

Gombe National Park and Mahale National Park were established in 1968 and 1985, respectively. They are the only National Parks with native wild chimpanzees that exist in Tanzania. They both sit on Lake Tanganyika, the second largest freshwater lake in the world.

*Photo Courtesy of the Jane Goodall Institute* Data courtesy of Tanzania National Management Plan, JGI/Lilian Pintea, TANAPA

Threats to Chimpanzees in Tanzania

Chimpanzees in Tanzania are threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation because of human activities like conversion of forests and woodlands to agriculture, settlements, charcoal production and logging.

Deforestation and human land uses on the village lands outside Gombe National Park *Photo courtesy of: NASA/MAXAR/the Jane Goodall Institute*

Tacare: Blazing the Trail for Community-Centered Conservation

The Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education (TACARE) program was designed as a pilot project to protect chimpanzees outside National Parks by addressing poverty and supporting sustainable livelihoods in villages around Lake Tanganyika.

Now known as Tacare, it represents the Jane Goodall Institute ’s (JGI) community-centered conservation approach. The Tacare philosophy is based on the principle that local people are the most connected to and dependent on healthy landscapes and ecosystem services. Tacare also acknowledges that though local people are the most impacted and vulnerable when ecosystem services disappear, they are also the best stewards of their own environment, and that every community member can make a difference every day. Beyond just collaboration, Tacare is about local ownership of the process of human development and managing local environments.

Step 1: Engage

Tacare is collaborative, working with local people and institutions to combine local knowledge with cutting-edge science and technologies.

This work is rooted in participation and inclusion. By directly engaging with local communities, a holistic approach develops understanding of how people are connected to ecosystems: combining traditional knowledge with science and appropriate use of innovative technologies.

Photo: JGI/ Lilian Pintea

Step 2: Listen

JGI field staff listen to and empower local decision-makers to own and drive development and conservation efforts in their landscapes sustainably.

The process really begins by listening to the needs and concerns of local people, as well as their insights and knowledge. Through JGI’s staff in Africa and long-term relationships, commitment and trust establishes a path forward. This also allows building of relationships between local communities, village governments, department representatives, staff, along with internal and external partners.

Photo: Nick Riley

Step 3: Understand

JGI combines participatory interpretation of very high-resolution satellite imagery with conceptual mapping approaches to facilitate communities to map their lands and natural resources. JGI’s community mapping approach integrates traditional knowledge of landscapes and local values with the best available GIS and science data. This establishes a common language and understanding of how local ecosystems are structured, function and change over time.

Photo: JGI/Lilian Pintea

Step 4: Act

JGI leverages the Esri ArcGIS platform to engage local stakeholders in using traditional knowledge and the best available GIS data to support planning, implementation, monitoring, and management of their natural resources. With Tacare, land-use plans are guided by spatially-explicit global conservation priorities and data - connecting global vision for conservation with local ownership.

Photo: JGI/ Shawn Sweeney

From Paper Plans to Real Landscapes: Local People Monitor Their Forests

*Map showing threats reported by JGI trained forest monitors*

By combining insights from local people with mobile technology and the Esri Survey-123 app, communities in western Tanzania can turn land-use plans into a reality.

Village forest monitors are selected by their own village governments and trained by JGI to use Esri technologies to patrol forests and identify wildlife as well as illegal activities and/or threats, which helps enforce land-use and conservation .

Leveraging these tools enables JGI to build local capacity to manage natural resources and protect chimpanzees from threats like disease, illegal logging, climate change, and more.

Kigalye Village: A Tacare Story of Hope

1972 - 2005: 58% of the area was deforested

In 1972, the area now represented by the Kigalye Village Forest Reserve had 370 hectares of woodlands (70 percent of its total area), while in 2005—when the village reserve was created—its woodlands had decreased to 156 hectares, just 42 percent of the forested area recorded in 1972.

Kigalye Village

Satellite Imagery courtesy of MAXAR and the Jane Goodall Institute.

Land-Use Plan & Village Forest Monitoring

Kigalye implemented a land-use plan in its village forest reserve that minimizes farming, logging, and fires and allows Miombo woodlands (which are the most extensive habitats available to Tanzania’s chimpanzees) to regenerate naturally.

The yellow pins in this scene represent locations of reports filed from village forest monitors.

Satellite Imagery courtesy of MAXAR and the Jane Goodall Institute.

2014: Natural Regeneration

The imagery shows that by 2014, community efforts had increased these woodlands to 302 hectares, or about 82 percent of the forested area documented in 1972.

*Overview of tree cover change between 2005 and 2014, courtesy of the Jane Goodall Institute*

Satellite Imagery courtesy of MAXAR and the Jane Goodall Institute.

A Network of Protected Areas Supported by JGI

Through the work of JGI and the Tacare approach funded by the USAID, 519,456 hectares of new protected areas were designated at the village and district levels, increasing the overall protection of chimpanzee range in Tanzania from 9% to 40%.

By putting people at the center, local communities can grow sustainable livelihoods as well as manage natural resources and forests to reduce threats to chimpanzees and other biodiversity. When this is paired with family planning and environmental education including JGI’s Roots & Shoots program, conservation success can reach new heights.

When technology and relevant data is in the hands of local people, it allows for transparent and community-driven processes to connect human needs with conservation goals, designing landscapes that are good for all.

Chimpanzees in Crisis

In 1900, an estimated 1-2 million chimpanzees lived in the wild across 24 African countries. Today, there are as few as 340,000 in only 21 countries.

Across Africa, Most Chimpanzees Live Outside of National Parks

Historical vs Present Chimpanzee Range (Data sources: current chimpanzee range - IUCN 2016), historic range - JGI)

Chimpanzees give a vital window into the health of the natural world; when they thrive, it is a sign that the forest and other species are healthy. When they are in trouble, we know that the problems are larger than theirs alone.

Chimpanzee Range vs National Parks and other Protected Areas (Data sources: current chimpanzee range - IUCN 2016; protected areas: the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) 2019)

The main threats to chimpanzees across their range are habitat loss, habitat degradation, and fragmentation, illegal bushmeat hunting, disease and the illegal pet trade/trafficking. The severity of these threats varies from region to region. Therefore, it is essential to understand, map and prioritize threats in order to develop cost-effective conservation strategies and actions that eliminate or minimize the most pressing threats to chimpanzees.

Expanding Across the Chimpanzee Range

JGI’s philosophy is one of innovation and evolution. JGI’s Tacare efforts now exist across Tanzania, Uganda, DRC, Republic of Congo and Senegal. But as threats to chimpanzees increase in Africa, JGI is creating solutions to increase the pace and scale of conservation impact.

To do this, JGI, in partnership with University of Maryland, Esri and NASA, has been developing a Decision Support System (DSS) that uses AI and over 30,000 Landsat satellite images to annually monitor and map habitat health of all great apes in Africa at very high 30-meter resolution. When combined with the Tacare and Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation approaches, JGI can convert big satellite data into actionable information for decision-makers at the village, district, national and Africa scale. This means local communities and governments can use more accurate and transparent information to act to protect chimpanzee habitat and foster sustainable solutions.

Looking toward the future

Spreading Tacare represents a “package” of best practices in community-centered conservation which have been adapted and improved over the last 25 years in sites across Africa. Over the next several years, JGI will increase capacity of existing work or support developing conservation actions across the chimpanzee range including in Mali, Burundi, Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea and Liberia.

Support JGI

Dr. Jane Goodall discovered that when we put local communities at the heart of conservation, we improve the lives of people, other animals and the environment. JGI advances Dr. Goodall’s holistic approach and brings the power of community-centered conservation to life. Through the integration of sound science, geospatial technologies and collaboration there is hope for chimpanzees.

❝Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.❞ - Jane Goodall