Tuesday 14 October 2008

Where does all the money go?

When you read the article below you might wonder how this could happen when the Jane Goodall Institute had an income in 2006 (last published accounts) of $17,000,000, and completed that year with $7,800,000 sitting in their bank account - and they pay their top two employees a combined amount of $280,000 between them. Given chimpanzees only exist in Africa, the JGI managed to spend almost $10,000,000 - a truly eye watering amount in any country, let alone Africa. Does this leave you wondering where all this money was spent whilst this chimpanzee population has been declining so rapidly?

If $10,000,000 AND the famous Jane Goodhall, in one year alone, do not stop the chimpanzee population declining - what will? http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3919

Is it possible we could one day be reading something similar about orangutans and one or two big name 'conservation' groups? Hmmnn.

I see Jane has been lecturing recently in Australia (doubtless raising money in the process):

"Dr Jane Goodall’s National Luncheons
The woman who redefined man, defines leadership
AGSM Executive Programs, in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute of Australia, is delighted to offer you a rare opportunity to share Dr Goodall’s unique insight into human organisational behaviour based on her life study of chimpanzees in the jungles of Africa."

I have highlighted the section I find curious, coming as it does from someone whose own organisation is seemingly proving spectacularly unsuccessful at saving chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees' last stronghold in danger as numbers fall by 90 per cent

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent Daily Telegraph
13/10/2008

Time appears to be running out for chimpanzees living in the wild after a survey of its last "stronghold" found numbers had plummeted by 90 per cent.

The effect of man had already led to a reduction from an estimated 100,000 fifty years ago to between 12,000 and 8,000 in 1990 in the Ivory Coast, the west African country that harboured more than half the world's population of chimps.

But a new survey has found that it has dropped a further 90 per cent to little more than 1,000 individual chimps. Now scientists believe there is only one viable population left in the Tai National Park and that the ape should be classified as "critically endangered".

Christophe Boesch, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, told the journal Current Biology, that the rise in the human population was to blame."The human population in Cote d'Ivoire has increased nearly 50 per cent over the last 18 years," he said.

"Since most threats to chimpanzee populations are derived from human activities such as hunting and deforestation, this has contributed to the dramatic decline in chimpanzee populations.

"The situation has deteriorated even more with the start of the civil war in 2002, since all surveillance ceased in the protected areas."

The few remaining chimpanzees are now highly fragmented, with only one viable population living in Taï National Park, according to a report.
Chimpanzees are notoriously difficult to spot so researchers count the number of nests to estimate populations.

In the new study, the number of nests recorded by Boesch and his colleague Geneviève Campbell had dropped by 90 per cent since the last count.

They found the catastrophic decline in chimpanzees is especially strong in forest areas with low protection status, where the researchers saw no sign of the chimps.

Even in protected areas like Marahoué National Park, chimpanzees have clearly suffered since surveillance and external funding support were disrupted by civil unrest in 2002.

Campbell said. "It was saddening that I only found one nest in this park, as during the previous survey they found 234 nests. The one nest I did find was also in an area that had just been cleared for agriculture."

Even the last remaining refuge for the dwindling West African chimpanzees the Taï National Park is extremely threatened by poachers, Boesch said.

"We must appeal to the international conservation community to invest in sustainable funding of conservation activities in national parks with known importance for chimpanzee populations.

"External financial support in that park is scheduled to end in 2010, a move that will probably have disastrous consequences for the last vestiges of chimpanzees in Côte d'Ivoire."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/10/13/scichimp113.xml