the Jane Goodall Institute
The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) promotes understanding and protection of great apes and their habitat and builds on the legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall, the founder, to inspire individual action by young people of all ages to help animals, people and to protect the world we all share.
Mie has worked for many years with Dr. Jane Goodall: first worked as a Communications Coordinator at the US headquarter, established JGI chapter in Japan with her friends promoting their environmental education program for youth, Roots & Shoots. In 2004, Mie had opportunity to work in conservation educational program with JGI Uganda, working with children and communities around Kibale National Park in Western Uganda, promoting conservation of wild chimpanzees and co-existence of humans and chimpanzees. Since 2001, Mie has been traveling to Japan with Dr. Jane Goodall to help raise funds for the Japanese JGI office.
Chimpanzees are our closest cousins: we share 98 percent of our genes. We are closer to chimpanzees more than African elephants are close to Indian elephants. Chimpanzees spend most of their days on tree tops. When they come down to the ground, they often travel on all fours, but they can walk on their legs like humans for as far as 1km. Chimpanzees use tools: they use twigs to fish termites out of mounds and bunches of leaves to sop up drinking water. They have and express emotions just like us, expressing love, anger, sorrow and all other emotions using gestures and vocalisation.
Sadly, chimpanzees in wild are under pressure everywhere they live, mainly due to loss of habitat and poaching. Where wild chimpanzees once numbered about one million at the turn of 20 century, today there are fewer than 300,000 remaining in the wild. Chimpanzees are listed in IUCN Red List “Endangered (EN)”, facing a high rise of extinction in the wild (WWF).
Deforestation: Loss of Habitat
Africa loses more than 10 million acres of forest, home for wild chimpanzees, every year, twice the world’s deforestation rate (UNEP). Meanwhile, population growth in Africa is faster than anywhere else, with accompanying poverty and lack of basic needs. As a result, local population encroaches on boundaries converting forests in to cultivatable lands to produce food. Working with local communities with education and a long-term land use planning is the key to the conservation of wild chimpanzees.
Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade
Poaching is another prominent threat to wild chimpanzees. Local hunters would set wire snares in forests to catch small animals, however, chimpanzees often get caught in these snares as they often walk on the ground. As a result, they lose one hand or foot, resulting in disability and sometimes leading it to a death from a heavy injury.
Bushmeat has been a primary food source in Central and West Africa, but in recent years poaching has become commercialised to satisfy the appetites of wealthy urban residents. When adult chimpanzees are hunt for meat, infant chimpanzees are frequently taking alive and sold in cities as pets. This bushmeat trade, combined with a pet trade has a consequential problem: as they cut through forests and build roads to reach into the heart of the forests to hunt animals, these same roads would give access to logging companies to cut trees in the new areas of the forests, leading to deforestation in bigger areas.
