Perreault Magazine - 30 -
Continued from page 29
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN HUMANS AND CHIMPANZEES
BP: As you observed similarities between humans and chimpanzees, can you give us two or three examples of biological similarities, emotional similarities and behavioral similarities?
JG: Biological similarities not observed by me, from captive studies. Composition of blood, structure of immune system, anatomy of brain AND the DNA of human and chimpanzee differs by only just over 1%.
Behavioral: in greeting may kiss, embrace, pat one another. Make and use tools. Show dark violent behavior, even a kind of primitive war, but also love, compassion and altruism.
DESTRUCTION OF HABITAT
BP: We stand on the threshold of a future without chimpanzees and other great apes in the wild. Where chimpanzees once numbered perhaps one million at the turn of the 20th century, today there are fewer than 300,000 remaining in the wild.
A key factor is destruction of habitat — Africa loses more than 10 million acres of forest every year, twice the world’s deforestation rate (Source: UNEP). Meanwhile Africa’s population is growing faster than anywhere else in the world, fueling increases in poverty and the pressures that come with it. As this statement is rather grim and the challenge seems gigantic, do ‘you’ have hope?
JG: I have hope because I have seen the results of JGI’s community based conservation in Tanzania, Uganda, DRC and Senegal. Improving the lives of the people living in poverty, encouraging environmentally sustainable alternatives to destroying the forest, training forest monitors to record illegal acts in village forest reserves (such as illegal tree felling, spent cartridge, snares) and also signs of positive health – chimpanzee nest, leopard paw print. Forest regeneration is not only possible – it is happening.
Working to empower women, microcredit programs to enable them to choose environmentally sustainable projects such as tree nurseries, shade grown coffee (no chemicals), egg production and so on. Providing scholarships and sanitary pads, etc to girls so they can stay in school after puberty. Offering family planning (eagerly received). The once bare hills around Gombe are now green and tree covered.