Chimps and Coffee

Last spring the grade 5/6 class at Downtown Alternative School participated in a Keep It Wild! workshop about chimpanzees. They had a chance to learn all about the similarities and differences between humans and their closest living relative. They also learned about some great ways to help chimpanzees in the wild and in captivity. Thanks to Abby for sharing her great chimpanzee artwork!

Did you know that in the last 100 years, the chimpanzee population has dropped from 2 million to less than 300,000 chimps? Each year their forest habitat is lost at a rate of four million hectares each year. The Jane Goodall Institute has launched a new Roots & Shoots campaign to help chimpanzees called What's in your cup? Find out more about the connections between coffee consumption and chimpanzee habitats, and find out what you can do to make a difference at: Roots & Shoots 

Stop Superbowl Chimps

CareerBuilder.com plans to air a new ad featuring real chimpanzees during the Super Bowl on February 5th. Join Jane Goodall and others in an effort to get the company to reconsider using chimps in their ads.

In her letter to the company, Jane Goodall points out several of the problems associated with the use of chimps in advertising and entertainment. For example, one issue is that these chimps are always infants, separated from their mothers. As they grow up and become strong and unmanageable, they often end up in roadside zoos, or get euthanized. Another issue is the negative impact these ads have on conservation efforts for wild chimpanzeees, which are endangered.

Read the entire letter she has written to the company, explaining all the problems inherent in the use of chimpanzees in entertainment, and then sign your name to it. http://janegoodall.ca/ask-careerbuilder-not-to-use-chimpanzees.htm

Careerbuilders.com ad featuring an "executive" chimp

Great Apes in Danger

Bushmeat is meat derived from wildlife in Africa, including animals like elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, and others. Often illegal methods of hunting, like wire snares, are used, and the animals being hunted might be endangered, threatened, or protected. Bushmeat has become a crisis because it is rapidly expanding, largely due to an increase in commercial logging in forested areas. The logging creates a system of roads and trucks that connects the forests and hunters to the cities and consumers.

If you live in Toronto and want to learn more about the bushmeat trade and what you can do to help, check out the photography exhibit at The Gladstone Gallery located at the Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto, between September 22 and Sept 28.  The exhibit is presented by the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada and We Animals, featuring photographs by Jo-Anne McArthur.   The photos document a snare-removal project in the Uganda forest, as well as primates rescued from the bushmeat trade as well as from the entertainment and research industries.  

Our Closest Living Relative

We share some amazing similarities with chimpanzees, who are our closest living relative. Chimps and humans can both walk bipedally, solve problems and use tools, show emotions, laugh, cry, use mirrors, sleep in beds, use opposable thumbs, and more. A great way to learn more about the human body is by studying the similarities and differences between chimpanzees and humans.

Check out newest Keep It Wild! workshop, Me & The Chimpanzee Students will have an opportunity to compare the skeletal hand of a human to a chimp's, discover what life would be like without an opposable thumb, measure heart rate, lung capactiy and arm strength, identify and compare digestive systems, and more. You can learn more about the workshop at our education website. Students will also get a chance to learn more about chimps in captivity, and about chimpanzee sanctuaries, like the Fauna Foundation.

You can check out our links on this page to learn more about the Fauna Foundation.For adults interested in  learning more about the Fauna Foundation there is also a recent book entitled "The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary" by Andrew Westoll.