Education

During her busy trip to Tanzania in July, Jane attended the launch and blessing of a project involving local members of Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots and the Tanzania Portland Cement Company (TPCC), also known as TwigaCement. The goal of the “Twiga Project” is to rehabilitate and restore cement quarries while promoting environmental sustainability and conservation in Tanzania. The project is currently scheduled to run until April 2013.

As our 4WD trudges along the last stretch of road into the Jane Goodall Institute’s Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre, one hour north of Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo (Congo), it is the sound of hooting chimpanzees that first announces our arrival. The centre is situated on a hilltop, overlooking a patchwork of forest and swampy plains, just a few kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean. As with most visitors to the sanctuary, it took me a couple of weeks to begin to understand the complexity and dedication required to care for and rehabilitate chimpanzees.

Each year along the shores of the Platte River, near Kearney, Nebraska, a phenomenal natural event takes place—the spring migration of the whooping and sandhill cranes. Though the great migrations of the buffalo and passenger pigeon have become obsolete, there still exists, unknown to many, an opportunity to witness an equally spectacular occurrence in the crane migration.