Echo, the remarkable matriarch of a family of elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, was most studied elephant in the world, the subject of several books and documentaries, including two NATURE films. For nearly four decades, elephant expert Cynthia Moss, and award-winning filmmaker Martyn Colbeck were on hand to record the trials and triumphs of Echo and her family, documenting the intense loyalties and deep caring that are so fundamental to all elephants, creating a moving record of a life we all can share.

Echo died of natural causes at the age of 65 in May of 2009, leaving the family she had cared for and guided for so long to face the worst drought ever recorded in Amboseli on their own. It was a final test of the years of Echo’s leadership. Had she taught them all they would need to survive without her? Could her wisdom continue to provide for them even after her death?

With rich archival footage and warm recollections, Moss and Colbeck share their memories of Echo and her family as they follow the fortunes of Echo’s family during the drought. Echo is shown caring for her newborn son, Ely, who overcame the crippling condition he was born with thanks to her patience and extraordinary perseverance. Echo is also shown making a heartbreaking decision to abandon her mortally-wounded daughter, Erin, in order to save Erin’s young calf, Email. Moss and Colbeck have especially fond memories of Echo’s mischievous baby daughter, Ebony, whose playful nature was so endearing to them both. And they marvel as they recall Echo’s rescue of Ebony when she was kidnapped by a rival clan, remembering it as one of the defining moments of her leadership.

Happily, Echo’s legacy lives on. Though other elephant families suffer devastating losses, her family is able to survive the drought, retaining her wisdom for future generations, keeping her memory alive.

It may be one of nature’s oddest couples: a tiny wasp that can barely be seen, and a giant fig tree, the sycomore, which shelters a remarkable menagerie of wildlife among its limbs. The wasp and the fig depend on each other for survival. Without the wasp, the tree could not pollinate its flowers and produce seeds. Without the fig, the wasp would have nowhere to lay its eggs.

The Queen of Trees shows this delicate dance of survival in exquisite detail, including spectacular close-ups of the wasp’s remarkable life inside a ripening fig. To capture such incredible images, filmmakers Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble spent two years camped out near a giant sycomore fig in Kenya’s outback, documenting the tree’s pivotal role as a source of food and shelter for everything from gray hornbills, Africa’s largest bird, to swarms of invading insects searching for food. In a surprising turn, some insects come to the tree’s aid — sparking a battle you won’t want to miss.

Online content for The Queen of Trees was originally posted April 2006.

To order a copy of The Queen of Trees, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Across Africa, the King of Beasts is in trouble. In the late 20th century, wildlife preserves were created to curtail safari hunting, but the African lion population continues to decline. Their numbers have dwindled from 100,000 in the early 1990s to no more than 30,000 and as few as 16,000 today. What could be endangering the King of Beasts?

In the mid-1990s a mysterious disease spread rapidly through the lion population in Tanzania and Kenya. An investigation revealed that the big cats had contracted canine distemper from jackals and hyenas that were picking it up from dogs in nearby villages. The spread of the disease was quickly halted and today lion numbers in the affected areas are back to previous levels.

If canine distemper was halted, why have lions continued to decline? An ever-expanding human population has led to competition between herders and lions for land and food. Lions living at the edge of the preserves sometimes stray from protected areas in search of easy prey. The Maasai and other ranchers will often kill them to protect their livestock and source of livelihood.

But as NATURE’s The Vanishing Lions shows, Africans are now struggling to reverse the decline. Everyone from scientists and conservationists to Maasai herders and ranchers is working together to find solutions. Travel to Kenya’s famed Serengeti Plains, the wildlife-rich Laikipia Plateau, and elsewhere in Africa as NATURE explores efforts to allow people and lions to coexist and prosper.

To order a copy of The Vanishing Lions, visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for The Vanishing Lions was originally posted April 2006.

It’s called the Laikipia Plateau. It sits along the equator in central Kenya, in the shadow of snow-capped Mount Kenya. Laikipia’s vast grasslands, riverbanks, and watering holes attract a rich array of wildlife, including some of Kenya’s largest numbers of rhinos, elephants, leopards, and buffalo. Researchers say the area — about 2 million acres — also supports nearly 200 African lions.

Laikipia is also home to people, including Maasai herders, who often come into conflict with lions that have learned to prey on easy-to-catch cows. The end result, too often, is dead cattle and dead lions.

In hopes of protecting both lions and farmers, local communities have embarked on a model experiment in wildlife-friendly land management called the Laikipia Predator Project, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society and an array of other conservation groups. One of its main goals is to help local farmers protect their livestock from lions so they don’t have to kill them.

“Our studies have shown, not surprisingly, that properties that lose fewer livestock to predators tend to kill fewer predators,” write project leaders Laurence Frank and Rosie Woodroffe of the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya. “This suggests that we can conserve predators more successfully if we can prevent them from killing livestock. Better management may not only reduce livestock losses today — it should also prevent young predators from learning to take stock in the first place.”

The science of predator management is in its infancy, the pair says, “and every livestock producer has their own opinions on which practices best protect stock.” So one aim of the project has been to test which approaches work best. So far, the tests show that the best solutions employ basic common sense and are not very expensive, project leaders explain.

For instance, the studies have found that the design and construction of “bomas” — traditional corrals for sleeping livestock — are key to protecting livestock from lions. “The stronger the better,” project officials advise, adding that bomas built from thorny acacia bushes work better than those made from solid posts or stone. The researchers also discovered that the height of boma walls was much less important than their thickness. “Thick walls were especially effective at preventing lion attacks, presumably because they prevented cattle from breaking out,” the researchers concluded.

The studies have also revealed some other tricks. It helps to divide bomas into several “rooms,” for instance, and to place them near human residences. An armed guard nearby, along with a dog or two, also helps, although dogs can sometimes transmit diseases to wildlife. (In the Serengeti, domestic dogs were the source of a virus that killed many lions in the 1990s.)

The Laikipia researchers are now testing the idea that lions are less likely to attack livestock where there is plenty of wild prey nearby. In The Vanishing Lions, for instance, viewers follow scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society as they track lions that are wearing radio collars. The collars are used to study the cats’ hunting patterns and to try to understand why some prides develop a taste for livestock while others do not.

Ultimately, project officials hope that the “predator-friendly management that we develop as a community in Laikipia will be a model for better conservation in the rest of Africa.” So far, the results are promising, as the Laikipia plateau continues to be one of the few places in Kenya where predator populations are growing, not dwindling.

Producer

RONNIE GODEANU

Art Director

SABINA DALEY

Designers

LENNY DROZNER

KAREN MATTSON

RADIK SHVARTS

Pagebuilding

BRIAN SANTALONE

Writer

CATHERINE DOLD

Production Artist

RUIYAN XU

Technical Director

BRIAN LEE

Content Consultant

GIANNA SAVOIE

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Anthony Chapman, Director of Interactive & Broadband. Bob Adleman, Business Manager. Carmen DiRienzo, Vice President and Managing Director, Corporate Affairs.

Television Credits

Producers

JOHN WATERS

GIL DOMB

Photography

JOHN WATERS

GIL DOMB

BILL WALLAUER

Sound

BILL WALLAUER

Film Editor

DAVID DICKIE

Writer

ANNE MacLEOD

Dubbing Editor

KATE HOPKINS

Music

JENNIE MUSKETT

Post Production Manager

DOMINIC WESTON

Dubbing Mixer

RICHARD CROSBY

Videotape Editor

RICHARD KNAPMAN

Assistant Editor

NIKKI REEVES

Production Team

JANICE BEATTY

TINA CLARKE

SONJA GRIMES

WILLIAM MEEHAN

MBARAKA MKWEPO

BENJAMIN URASSA

Production Executive

BARBARA STOHLMAN

Scientific Consultant

CHARLOTTE UHLENBROEK

Archive Footage

HUGO van LAWICK

Special thanks to

TANZANIA NATIONAL PARKS

THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE

DR. ANTHONY COLLINS

PETER MSUYA

HILALI MATAMA AND THE GOMBE RESEARCH TEAM

Executive Producers

HUGO van LAWICK

MICHAEL ROSENBERG

For NATURE

Executive Producer

FRED KAUFMAN

Science Editor

JANET HESS

Coordinating Producer

JANICE YOUNG

Associate Producers

JESSICA SIEGEL

CAROLINE CORNEY

Researchers

SUSANE LEE

HILDY RUBIN

Production Assistant

JILL CLARKE

Production Secretary

KEVIN DOYLE

Manager

EILEEN FRAHER

Production Manager

JOHN SCHWALLY

Videotape Editors

BARRY GLINER

KURT ENGFEHR

Audio Mix

ED CAMPBELL

Host Sequence Directed by

FRED KAUFMAN

Filmed by

ALAN DEGEN

at

FERNBANK SCIENCE CENTER

Executive Editor

GEORGE PAGE

A co-production of

Partridge Films Ltd and Thirteen/WNET New York

This program was produced by Thirteen/WNET New York,

which is solely responsible for its content.

The Jane Goodall Institute
http://www.janegoodall.org
Includes basic biographical information on Jane Goodall and chimp-related links.

Discover Chimpanzees
http://www.discoverchimpanzees.org
The home page of the Jane Goodall Institute’s Center for Primate Studies.

Primate Image Collection
http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/images/chimps.html
Chimpanzee images from the Audiovisual Archive Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center.

C.H.I.M.P.P. Homepage
http://jinrui.zool.kyoto-u.ac.jp/CHIMPP/CHIMPP.html
A paper on C.H.I.M.P.P., or Chemo-Ethology of Hominoid Interactions with Medicinal Plants and Parasites, discussing whether chimps intentionally eat medicinal plants when sick.

Chimpanzee Hunting Behavior and Human Evolution
http://www.amsci.org/amsci/articles/95articles/Stanford-full.html
A paper about chimp hunting habits that appeared in AMERICAN SCIENTIST.

Gombe Stream National Park Information
http://www.tanzania-web.com/parks/gombe.htm
Fact sheet on the park, including how to get there and what to expect.

Books

De Waal, Frans. CHIMPANZEE POLITICS: POWER AND SEX AMONG APES. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989

Ferber, Elizabeth. JANE GOODALL: A LIFE WITH ANIMALS. London: Marshall Cavendish, 1997.

Fouts, Roger, and Stephen Tukel Mills. NEXT OF KIN: WHAT CHIMPANZEES HAVE TAUGHT ME ABOUT WHO WE ARE. New York: William Morrow, 1997.

Goodall, Jane. IN THE SHADOW OF MAN. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

Goodall, Jane. THROUGH A WINDOW: MY THIRTY YEARS WITH THE CHIMPANZEES OF GOMBE. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

Goodall, Jane and Alan Marks. WITH LOVE: TEN HEARTWARMING STORIES OF CHIMPANZEES IN THE WILD. New York: North South Books, 1998.

Goodall, Jane and Michael Neugebauer. THE CHIMPANZEE FAMILY BOOK. New York: North South Books, 1997.

Peterson, Dale and Jane Goodall. VISIONS OF CALIBAN: ON CHIMPANZEES AND PEOPLE. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

Pratt, Paul and Paula Bryant Pratt. THE IMPORTANCE OF JANE GOODALL. London: Lucent Books, 1997.

When Jane Goodall arrived there in 1960, Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park was just one parcel of forest amidst a vast sea of trees. Today, however, as shown in JANE GOODALL’S WILD CHIMPANZEES, it is a small green island engulfed by farms, fields, and villages. Despite the change, this park (at a mere 20 square miles, Tanzania’s smallest) is still one of the best places in the world to see wild chimpanzees in their natural habitat.

The park, located near the Burundi border on the world’s longest lake, Lake Tanganyika, is rich in both human and natural history. Nearby is the village of Ujiji, where historians believe British researcher H.M. Stanley uttered the famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” in 1871 upon encountering fellow adventurer David Livingstone, who had been believed dead. Livingstone, though seriously ill, convinced Stanley to join him on a search for the source of the Nile — a quest that took them through the Gombe Valley.

Today, the park is reachable only by tramp steamer. It is best visited during the dry season, which stretches from May to October. If you visit, park officials warn, be aware that overnight facilities are rugged and camping is restricted in order to protect visitors from the danger posed by aggressive baboons. Travelers willing to put up with such challenges, however, are sure to be rewarded with glimpses of wildlife.

The park’s steep, narrow valleys, carpeted by evergreen rainforests that give way to alpine bamboo stands and grass-topped ridges, are home to two kinds of acrobatic colobus monkeys, along with bushpigs, giant kingfishers, crowned eagles, trumpeter hornbills, and more than 50 other wild species. Snorkellers may enjoy the adjoining lake, which holds almost 100 kinds of brightly-colored cichlid fish. However, visitors eager to get as close to the chimps as Goodall does should know that it is not safe for strangers to approach the apes without a trained guide. And be sure to leave your best clothes behind: observers sitting beneath feeding chimps can expect to be the targets of less than sanitary showers!

While we may believe that we have nothing but ancestors in common with our primate relatives, Jane Goodall’s research into chimpanzee behavior shows that, in areas from warfare to parenting, our two species are closely linked. For example, she found that, like us, chimpanzees create tools to make their lives easier — such as the carefully chosen grass stems used to “fish” for tasty insects, as shown in this NATURE program.

Goodall followed up this discovery with stunning evidence that the seemingly peaceful chimpanzees in fact systematically hunted smaller primates, such as colobus monkeys, for meat: one such hunt is grippingly documented on NATURE. In addition to killing for food, Goodall also found that some female chimps also kill the young of other females in their own troops in an effort to maintain dominance.

But aggression is only part of chimp life. Goodall has also documented affectionate touching instantly recognizable to people: hugs, kisses, pats on the back, even tickles. “They show gestures that we’re so familiar with,” Goodall noted in a recent speech to the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

These caresses are evidence, she said, of “the close, supportive, affectionate bonds that develop between family members and other individuals within a community, which can persist throughout a life span of more than 50 years.”

Goodall’s research “has far-reaching implications that have revolutionized the fields of observation biology and conservation,” says Dr. Robert Sullivan, who chairs the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, a $150,000 award that Goodall and two other primate researchers shared in 1997. In particular, say scientists, Goodall’s practice of following individual chimps for decades has yielded an unprecedented wealth of information for current researchers.

In 1997, for instance, University of Minnesota researchers Anne Pusey and Jennifer Williams used 25 years’ worth of data from Goodall’s project to show, for the first time, that higher-ranking female chimpanzees do indeed produce more offspring than their lower-ranking troopmates.

The researchers were able to confirm this long-debated idea only because Goodall’s project has consistently documented the reproductive success of specific females, including groundbreaking work on their use of “pant-grunts,” chimp sounds that indicate rank. Apparently, higher-ranking chimps get better access to food, and that translates into increased survival rates for their young.

Goodall’s Gombe data have also led researchers to take a closer look at the role that hunting plays in chimp feeding habits. One recent Gombe study, for instance, concluded that the 45 members of one troop ate a ton of monkey meat per year. During one hunting binge, chimps killed 71 colobus monkeys in 68 days; one chimp alone killed 42 monkeys over five years. All told, chimps may kill and eat a third of the Gombe’s colobus population each year. Researchers have also found that lower-ranking males often trade the meat for mating privileges; such trades may help prevent inbreeding by keeping a single group of males from fathering the majority of a troop’s children.

Goodall’s legacy has especially inspired women, like Minnesota’s Pusey and Williams, to become biologists. She lectures relentlessly in an effort to get young girls and boys involved in understanding and protecting chimps and other wild animals. “If children get education, they are more likely to spread the word about conservation,” Goodall says.

Her revolutionary discoveries about chimpanzees are memorably documented in the NATURE program JANE GOODALL’S WILD CHIMPANZEES. The program gives viewers a rare look into the chimpanzee’s world by chronicling the tense struggle between two brothers, Freud and Frodo, for leadership of their troop. It also captures some of the chimp behaviors, from tender hugs to ruthless killing, that intrigue the scientists who investigate the origins of our own habits.

The idea that we have much in common with chimps, including more than 98 percent of our genetic code, is now widely accepted. But chimp life was still a mystery in 1957, when, on a trip she had saved for years to make, a 23-year old Goodall arrived in Kenya to visit a high school friend. Once there, in an effort to realize her dream of studying wild animals, she contacted Louis Leakey, a prominent anthropologist working at a Kenyan museum who would later become famous for his discoveries of early human remains at the Olduvai Gorge. She soon won a job assisting Leakey with his studies, doing everything from documenting monkey behavior to hunting for fossils. Leakey eventually encouraged Goodall to study chimpanzees, animals that he believed could provide us a window into our own beginnings.

Many scientists were skeptical, even scandalized, by Leakey’s suggestion that a young woman who had never gone to college could succeed as a lone field researcher in the chimpanzees’ rugged mountain home. Nevertheless, in 1960, Goodall began her research at Gombe Stream National Park in the East African nation of Tanzania.

At first, as Goodall recalls in the NATURE program, it appeared that the primates’ behavior would remain forever mysterious. Within a few years, however, she became intimately familiar with their lives, spending her days trailing them through the forest and recording their habits. Some of her techniques were unorthodox and controversial: for instance, rather than assigning her chimps numbers, she gave them names like “Fifi” and “Passion.” She also set up at Gombe a banana-laden feeding station designed to lure the apes out into the open, where they could be more easily observed. She now regrets this practice, which somewhat altered the chimps’ behavior, but researchers have nevertheless found that Gombe’s chimps get less than two percent of their food at the station, spending the bulk of their time foraging in the forests.

Soon after becoming accepted by a local troop, Goodall realized that what she was observing challenged virtually every conventional notion about chimpanzees. Where many researchers saw “primitive” apes living a simple existence, Goodall found highly intelligent, emotional creatures living in complex social groups. Most dramatically, her work shattered two long-standing myths: the idea that only humans could make and use tools, and the belief that chimps were passive vegetarians.

Goodall’s discoveries were brought to the public’s attention by a 1965 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC television documentary, which vaulted her to international prominence and quieted her doubters. That same year, England’s Cambridge University awarded Goodall an honorary doctorate; she is one of only a handful of people to earn that distinction without having first completed four years of college.

Goodall lived at Gombe almost full-time until 1975, accumulating a wealth of long-term data still valued by today’s researchers. Since then, she has founded Jane Goodall Institutes in nine countries, including Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These days, she continues her studies from afar, focusing her attention on a passionate campaign for chimpanzee conservation and research and speaking against the nonessential use of chimps in medical research. She travels the world giving speeches (often punctuated by her haunting renditions of chimp calls) and raising funds for the half-dozen chimpanzee refuges she has established in Africa.

Compassion and concern for the species has swelled in recent years, partially due to Goodall’s proof of the similarities between chimps and humans. At the same time, however, there is a mounting interest in using them for medical research — an unfortunate one, in Goodall’s view. “Some scientists believe chimpanzees can be useful in finding out more about human diseases and searching for cures because they can be infected with otherwise uniquely human viruses,” she regrets. But, she cautions, “it isn’t only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought [and] emotions like joy and sorrow.” Coming to grips with this, she hopes, will help resolve “many ethical problems [regarding how] we use and abuse animals.”