Great Ape Conservation Groups Work Together

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Great Ape Conservation Groups Work Together

Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall organizations launch historic partnership

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND, Feb. 23 -/E-Wire/-- Forty years after Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall began their pioneering work with great apes in Africa, the two organizations they founded have formed an historic partnership to work together in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

In their separate spheres working on behalf of great apes, both the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI) and the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) have developed the same conservation philosophy: Effective conservation must begin with the needs and priorities of local communities. With that shared approach, the two organizations will join forces in an area of Eastern Congo that has significant gorilla and chimpanzee populations. The joint project will help improve health care, provide family planning training and methods, and help local people develop sustainable and more efficient agricultural and livestock practices.

The project will build on a three-year-old Fossey Fund program working with community-based reserves and national parks to protect the eastern lowland gorilla and other endemic species in an 8.6 million acre landscape. It will use a community-centered conservation model developed by JGI in Tanzania.

DFGFI, founded as the "Digit Fund" by Dian Fossey in 1978, and renamed after her assassination in 1985, has led conservation and scientific study of mountain gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes area (straddling Rwanda, DRC, and Uganda) for more than two decades. In early 2001, DFGFI launched a new "Community Conservation" program to protect eastern lowland gorillas, endemic to eastern DRC. This program resulted in the now well-known Tayna Gorilla Reserve, a government-sanctioned 700km2 nature reserve, managed by traditional leaders, landowners, and local stakeholders. The success of this project led to the formation of seven more community-based reserve projects, who with Tayna created an umbrella association they call UGADEC (Union of Associations for Gorilla Conservation and Community Development in Eastern DRC).

Recently, to expand and enhance this program, DFGFI created a strategic partnership with Conservation International (CI), and received a three-year funding package of more than 3 million dollars from CI, via their Global Conservation Fund and the USAID-funded Central African Regional Program for the Environment. The over-reaching philosophy of this program is that conservation can successfully become the responsibility of local people and that community development initiatives must go hand-in-hand with the protection of biodiversity.

JGI, founded in 1977, has been delivering community development success linked to conservation objectives through its TACARE project, a community-centered conservation and development program operating since 1994 around Gombe National Park. Through partnerships with Citizens International and Advance Africa, JGI recently was awarded 1 million dollars from USAID to adapt the TACARE project to a site of its choosing in DRC. After evaluating several possibilities, and then conducting an extended site visit with DFGFI and UGADEC, JGI announced that it will partner with DFGFI to support the latter's community-based conservation programs by providing linked community development initiatives modeled after TACARE.

JGI chose to partner with UGADEC for several reasons, said JGI's Africa programs VP George Strunden. First, UGADEC's geographical footprint encompasses a large chimpanzee population, in line with the Institute's mission to preserve chimpanzee habitat. "Just as importantly, we recognized a great opportunity to support an already existing network of truly grassroots organizations that tie community development to conservation objectives. All the parties understand that sustainable conservation must involve local people as true partners."

"It is perhaps not surprising that DFGFI and JGI find themselves working together after all these years, given their organizational histories; what is surprising, however, and incredibly satisfying is that our two organizations share an almost identical people-centered philosophy, one that emphasizes how local people are inextricably woven into their ecosystems, and that their economic success is the key to long-term conservation," commented Patrick Mehlman, Ph.D., Vice President for DFGFI's Africa Programs.

To provide development initiatives that will enhance and strengthen the DFGFI Community Conservation program, JGI will launch a series of projects focusing on improving livelihoods through enhanced agricultural and livestock practices. Aided by Advance Africa and Citizens International, JGI also will develop projects to improve health care and family planning. These programs will enhance and complement many of DFGFI's ongoing interventions, such as the Ecosystem Health Program, directed by Dr. Alecia Lilly, which studies cross-transmission of intestinal parasites between great apes and local human communities, and then provides free treatment to participants.

Says Dr. Goodall: "We're thrilled to partner with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to further community-based conservation in the DRC. With great apes in the wild in danger of extinction, it is so important that conservation organizations share their resources and energies. Both our organizations take a holistic approach to community conservation that ensures a productive partnership â and, I hope, even a model one."

The Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is dedicated to the conservation and protection of gorillas and their habitats in Africa, through research, conservation action, education and partnerships. Founded by Dian Fossey as the Digit Fund and renamed after her death, DFGFI also operates the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda, and maintains a staff of scientists, trackers and anti-poaching patrols in the Volcanoes National Park. DFGFI also operates a conservation action outreach plan, working in conjunction with innovative community-based preserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo, establishing a GIS center at the National University of Rwanda, and participating in other critical conservation and community projects. For more information about DFGFI, call (800) 851-0203, or visit the Web site at www.gorillafund.org.

Founded in 1977, the Jane Goodall Institute continues Dr. Goodall's pioneering research into chimpanzee behavior -- research which transformed scientific perceptions of the relationship between humans and animals. Today, the Institute is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. It also is widely recognized for establishing innovative community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa, and the Roots & Shoots education program, which has groups in more than 87 countries. JGI's newest programs in Africa are linked not only geographically through the Congo Basin watershed, but also thematically by addressing the root social and economic factors that shape human relationships with the environment.

The Jane Goodall Institute

Fossey Fund Contact:

Erika Archibald (404) 624-5881

[REDACTED-EMAIL]

Nona Gandelman (240) 645-4000

[REDACTED-EMAIL]

http://www.gorillafund.org

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