The Beauty and Perseverance of Biodiversity
Today, on International Day of Biodiversity, I reflect on the fact that we are experiencing the 6th great extinction; the first great extinction attributed directly to human actions. I have spent many, many days in the rain forests of Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and enjoyed opportunities to visit forests in other countries as well […]
Call to Action: Vaquita Nears Extinction, But There is Still Hope.
2017 has been a year full of crazy news, especially in the environmental realm. In the whirlwind of stories and headlines, a new one is about to emerge: “Marine Mammal Forced to Extinction”. With such somber stories, it is ever important that we use them as fuel for our hopeful navigation of our world. Let’s […]
Stop the Show: Luc’s Story
It’s a busy day in the restaurant. Children visiting with their parents poke Luc, wishing to rile him into some sort of dance. Luc tries to retaliate, to follow the children to play, but he is tethered to a post by a tightly bound rope. Luc is a chimpanzee. He was taken as an infant, […]
The Show Stops Now: Chimps Aren’t Entertainment
Internationally, chimpanzees and other great apes are used as props in television, film, circuses, roadside attractions, as pets and as social media share-able content. This cruel business removes chimps from their mothers at an early age, puts them into torturous training programs, asks them to perform unnatural acts, and eventually tosses these beautiful, highly social […]
A Bush Walk with Pea the Pangolin in Mozambique
Pangolins are nocturnal and solitary. Just as people around the world are hearing more about them, the demand for their meat and scales is driving them toward extinction. In our travels in Africa, my husband Mark and I have longed to see a Pangolin, without success…until we met Pea. Rescued from poachers and cared for […]
May Project of the Month (POTM): Building a sanctuary seed by seed
When it gets cold in California, people hunker down for the winter, break out their hot chocolate and maybe start a Harry Potter marathon. But for the monarch butterfly, when it gets cold in California, they start their 2,500 mile long journey to the warmer regions of Mexico. There, they will hibernate in pine or […]
Making Good Choices at the Grocery Store
As consumers, one of our greatest powers is choosing what product to buy. When we purchase something at the store, we are giving our money to the company that produced or supplied that product. Each dollar spent is a message to that store demonstrating that this product will sell, that you like what they are […]
Remembering La Vieille: Mother To Orphaned Chimps
I am not sure who introduced me to La Vieille for the first time, way back in the late 1980s. She was living (existing rather) in what was known as the Pointe Noire Zoo in the Republic of Congo. It had been built, in the French colonial era, as a holding station for wild animals […]
Mothers Are Hope in Action!
Hope in Action The power of a single story is immeasurable. When a young 26 year old woman from England traveled to Tanzania to study wild animals and share their stories, she transformed our understanding of our relationship to non-human animals, and what was possible for a woman in science, or in general. The reverberations […]
JGI Jungle Journals: Notes From Gombe, Tanzania IV
Dr. Jane Goodall had a single dream: to study wildlife in Africa. When she was 26 years old, she was given an opportunity, by a innovative scientist named Louis Leakey, to achieve this dream in a place called Gombe. Gombe, Tanzania, has since Dr. Goodall’s studies been the home of ongoing behavioral, biological, conservation and […]
