At the turn of the 20th Century, they numbered between 1 and 2 million . . . now there are estimated to be fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees remaining in the wild. Incredibly—over the past 100 years—we may have lost as many as 1.7 million of the chimpanzees that roamed the forests of Africa.
When a 26-year-old Jane Goodall first arrived at the then Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in the British protectorate of Tanganyika, she brought only, her binoculars and notebooks. Her mission was clear: shed light on the little-known lives of the resident wild chimpanzees. But in response to the deepening environmental crisis throughout Equatorial Africa, over the years her work expanded. Today, Dr. Goodall and the Jane Goodall Institute strive to protect chimpanzees and their habitats through community-based conservation programs in Africa--while continuing the research that started it all more than 50 years earlier.