I am grateful to so many people whose information, insight, and inspiration contributed to this book. I list only a few of these here; to the rest, some of whom have requested anonymity, others too numerous to list, my private thanks must suffice.
While I was traveling overseas to research this book, I especially appreciated the hospitality of several individuals. Rosamond H. Carr shared with me her rich memories and the comforts of her beautiful home in Gisenyi, Rwanda; in Tanzania, Gombe staff researcher David Gilagiza introduced me to the chimpanzees, and was a wonderful host and instructor. Dr. Richard Estes provided me with many useful contacts in Nairobi, including Bob Campbell and his two delightful hyraxes. I am indebted to Dr. Biruté Galdikas and Pak Bohap bin Jalan for making me welcome at their home and study site in Tanjung Puting and Pasir Panjang in Borneo, and to the staff and orangutans at the Orangutan Project. A special thanks to Dianne Taylor-Snow particularly for caring for me in Singapore while I recovered from the disease I picked up in the interior of Kalimantan. We didn’t realize until we had both gotten home to the states that I had dengue fever—and that she was suffering from hepatitis. I have never enjoyed such a fruitful illness: Dianne has been one of my most treasured friends ever since, and accompanied me on many of my subsequent research expeditions, taking photos and keeping me relatively sane.
Closer to home, I would like to thank Farley Mowat for his friendship and solicitude, as well as Geza Teleki and Heather McGiffen, the Schwartzel family, Mrs. Tita Caldwell, Ian Redmond, Richard Wrangham, Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Steve Thomas, Gretchen Vogel, and Bob Fleegal. My thanks to the Goodall family for their kind help and for making me welcome in their home in Bournemouth, England.
My deepest thanks to my husband, Howard Mansfield, a better writer than I and the best editor I have ever had.
Several organizations and their staffs provided me with reference materials and personal recollections. Of these I would particularly like to thank the National Geographic Society, the L. S. B. Leakey Foundation, the Jane Goodall Institute, Earthwatch, the International Primate Protection League, and the African Wildlife Foundation in both Washington and Nairobi.
I thank the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for the funds and moral support provided me during this project.
I am grateful to Dr. Pamela Parker and the Chicago Zoological Society for making possible my first field studies of wild animals.
I thank my beloved literary agent Sarah Jane Freymann. I will always be grateful to the late Peter Davison, the editor who believed in me enough to publish this, my first book, under his imprint back in 1991—and to Joni Praded, the editor who believed in me enough to republish this new and revised edition in 2009. In bringing this book up to date, Kate Cabot was an excellent research assistant, and remains deeply committed to the cause of primate conservation. I thank her for her fine work. I would also like to thank Joel Glick, whose dedication to Africa’s primates, particularly its gorillas, has inspired me ever since this book was first published. Joel was in junior high school when he and his father came to a presentation I made in Boston on the subject of this book, and already he knew he would commit his life to the protection of mountain gorillas. This he has indeed done, walking in Dian Fossey’s footsteps in spite of difficulties other young people would have found impossible. It has been my privilege to see him fulfill that dream.
And finally, as I did with the first edition of this book, I want to thank my father, the late Brigadier General A. J. Montgomery. He died before he could read this book, but he knew I was writing it, and even got to accompany me to a dinner in honor of my heroine, Jane Goodall. But it was my father who always was, and remains to this day, my greatest hero. It was his idea that I make my first trips to Africa and Australia. In his intrepid footsteps, I will forever, however falteringly, follow.
the politics and practice of sustainable living
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Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey,
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