Pan Africa News The Newsletter of the Committee for the Care and Conservation of Chimpanzees, and the Mahale Wildlife Conservation Society ISSN 1884-751X (print), 1884-7528 (online) mahale.main.jp/PAN/ JUNE 2011 VOL. 18, NO. 1 P. A. N. EDITORIAL STAFF Chief Editor: Contents Kazuhiko Hosaka, Kamakura Womenʼs University, Japan Deputy Chief Editor: <OBITUARY> Michio Nakamura, Kyoto University, Japan Professor Toshisada Nishida: Chief Editor of Pan Africa News Associate Editors: Kazuhiko Hosaka 1 Christophe Boesch, Max-Planck Institute, Germany Jane Goodall, Jane Goodall Institute, USA <TRIBUTE> Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Kyoto University, Japan Jane Goodall 3 William C. McGrew, University of Cambridge, UK <ARTICLE> John C. Mitani, University of Michigan, USA A Wild Chimpanzee Uses a Stick to Disable a Snare at Vernon Reynolds, Budongo Forest Project, UK Yukimaru Sugiyama, Kyoto University, Japan Bossou, Guinea Richard W. Wrangham, Harvard University, USA Yukimaru Sugiyama & Tatyana Humle 3 Takeshi Furuichi, Kyoto University, Japan <NOTE> Editorial Secretaries: A Chimpanzee Bed Found at Tubila, 20 km from Noriko Itoh, Kyoto University, Japan Lilanshimba Habitat Koichiro Zamma, Great Ape Research Institute, Hayashibara, Japan Hideshi Ogawa, Midori Yoshikawa & Mapinduzi Agumi Inaba, Japan Monkey Centre, Japan Mbalamwezi 5 <NOTE> Mahale Chimpanzees Start to Eat Oil Palm Instructions for Authors: Koichiro Zamma, Mai Nakashima & Abdala Pan Africa News publishes articles, notes, reviews, forums, Ramadhani 6 news, essays, book reviews, letters to editor, and classified <NOTE> ads (restricted to non-profit organizations) on any aspect Immigration of a Large Number of Adolescent Female of conservation and research regarding chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bilias (Pan paniscus). Contributors are Chimpanzees into the Mahale M Group requested to write in English and the papers except forums, Takashi Hayakawa, Mai Nakashima & Michio reviews and essays should usually be 1,500 words or less. Nakamura 8 Articles and notes will be peer-reviewed by at least one <NEWS> appropriate expert on request of the PAN editorial staff. Bush Fire Control Using Arbors in Green Corridor Manuscripts should be formatted as DOC or RTF files and Project at Bossou submitted by e-mail to: [email protected] Naruki Morimura, Gaku Ohashi, Aly Gaspard Photos and figures should be formatted as JPEG or GIF files Soumah & Tetsuro Matsuzawa 10 and sent separately by e-mail attachments. <BOOK INFO> PAN is published twice a year in June and December. Deadline The Chimpanzees of Bossou and Nimba 12 for manuscripts is one month before publication (i.e. the ends of May and November). <OBITUARY> Centre, passed away in Kyoto on 7 June, 2011. He was Professor Toshisada Nishida: 70 years old. For the last five years of his life, he fought Chief Editor of Pan Africa News against rectal cancer and pursued his professional life as a primatologist to the very end. Kazuhiko Hosaka Prof. Nishida was best-known for his pioneering re- search on the wild chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains, Faculty of Child Studies, Kamakura Women’s University, Tanzania. The project, now called ‘Mahale Mountains Japan (E-mail: [email protected]) Chimpanzee Research Project’ (MMCRP), is the second- oldest ape field study, preceded only by Dr. Jane Goodall’s Dr. Toshisada Nishida, Professor Emeritus of Kyoto Gombe project. When only a 24-year-old graduate stu- University and Executive Director of the Japan Monkey dent, Prof. Nishida was dispatched to Mahale in 1965 as 1 2 Pan Africa News, 18(1), June 2011 He also served as President of International Primatological Society (1996–2000), President of Primate Society of Japan (2001–2005), and Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal, Primates (2004–2011). He won the Jane Goodall Award (1990), the Leakey Prize (2008), the International Primatolog- ical Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2008), and the Chunichi Cultural Prize (2010). Pan Africa News (PAN) was launched in 1994 by Prof. Nishida, who agreed with Dr. Goodall’s advice that field-workers studying wild Pan spe- cies at various field sites in Africa needed a forum in which to exchange early scientific findings and useful information about conservation. I remember the initial days, in which I discussed the role of Moshi Hamisi (Left), Prof. Nishida (Center), and Rashidi Kitopeni PAN with him and Dr. Linda A. Turner, who edited (Right). At Kansyana, on 27 August 2009. Photo by Kazuhiko Hosaka. the first issue. In 1997, Prof. Nishida set up the edi- part of the late Prof. Junichiro Itani’s grand-scale project torial board and launched the peer-review system to investigate the wild chimpanzees of western Tanzania. for this journal and served as its Chief Editor until his He succeeded in habituating the Mahale chimpanzees by death. giving them sugarcane and banana (Food provisioning On 30 January, 2011, Prof. Nishida, who was fac- was abandoned in the mid-1980s). ing the final stage of his illness, called in Dr. Michio In 1968, he published the first empirical report1 on Nakamura, Associate Professor of Kyoto University, and chimpanzee social structure and introduced his idea of the me, in order to talk about handing over his work. He asked ‘unit-group’ (also referred to as ‘community’ by many re- Dr. Nakamura to act as the new organizer of MMCRP, searchers), in which chimpanzees interact with each other adding that we should continue our long-term study of on the basis of stable membership in closed structure. Mahale chimpanzees for at least a century. Then he asked Joined by many excellent field-workers, such as the me to take over his duties as co-chairman of MWCS and late Profs. Kenji Kawanaka and Shigeo Uehara, Prof. Chief Editor of PAN. Nishida contributed substantially to primatology in the After that day, he shifted his attention to the publica- international arena by publishing so many peer-reviewed tion of his last book6. He stressed that this would be his articles about chimpanzees that I cannot go deep into first English-language book about Mahale chimpanzees detail here (but see other obituaries coming soon in sev- for general readers, although he had written many books eral primatological journals). He also edited academic for the Japanese public. His work was well-known to pri- primatology books in English2–4. For the last decade, he matologists, but less so to the international general public. was enthusiastic about video-recording chimpanzee be- Thanks to the generous dedication of Prof. William C. havior, which yielded a definitive ethogram of the Mahale McGrew, University of Cambridge, the book will appear chimpanzees5. at the end of 2011. In addition, he devoted much energy to conserva- He was involved with higher education at the Univer- tion. Together with the late Prof. Itani, he organized a sity of Tokyo (18 years) and Kyoto University (15 years). campaign to make Mahale a protected area. Their efforts Under his supervision, many biological anthropologists were realized in 1985, when Mahale was designated as a and primatologists were trained and are pursuing their national park of Tanzania. careers in various disciplines, as well as chimpanzee In 1994, he collaborated with Prof. Hosea Kayumbo, research. University of Dar es Salaam, to found the ‘Mahale To be frank, it is hard for me to accept the reality Wildlife Conservation Society’ (MWCS), and he served of his death, owing to still-vivid memories of his final as its co-chairman. He not only made efforts to conserve journey to Mahale, when he observed his beloved chim- wildlife within the park but also endeavored to initi- panzees in the forest for the last time (I accompanied ate community-based conservation in villages north of him there in August 2009). Personal recollections of his the park. Believing that education of local children and legendary accomplishments in the field will be gathered improvement of public hygiene are vital to wildlife con- and shared among his friends and colleagues in a future servation, he negotiated with the Embassy of Japan in special issue of PAN. Tanzania for Grant Assistance for Grassroots Projects and successfully built Katumbi Primary School (2003) and REFERENCES Katumbi Dispensary (2011). 1. Nishida T 1968. The social group of wild chimpanzees in He extended his passion for great ape conservation on the Mahali Mountains. Primates 9:167–224. 2. Nishida T (ed) 1990. The Chimpanzees of the Mahale a global scale. In 2001, he was appointed one of the five Mountains: Sexual and Life History Strategies. University UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Special of Tokyo Press, Tokyo. Envoys for Great Apes and later served as a GRASP (Great 3. Nishida T, McGrew WC, Marler P, Pickford M, de Waal Apes Survival Project) patron. FBM (eds) 1992. Topics in Primatology, Vol.1 Human Pan Africa News, 18(1), June 2011 3 Origins. University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo. 4. McGrew WC, Marchant LF, Nishida T (eds) 1996. Great <ARTICLE> Apes Societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. A Wild Chimpanzee Uses a 5. Nishida T, Zamma K, Matsusaka T, Inaba A, McGrew WC 2010. Chimpanzee Behavior in the Wild. An Audio- Stick to Disable a Snare at Visual Encyclopedia. Springer, Tokyo. 6. Nishida T in press (to be published in 31 Dec, 2011). Bossou, Guinea The Chimpanzees of the Lakeshore: Natural History 1 and Culture at Mahale. Cambridge University Press, Yukimaru Sugiyama & Tatyana Cambridge. Humle2 1 Tokai-Gakuen University, Japan 2 School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, UK Tribute (E-mail: [email protected]) INTRODUCTION June 12th 2011 Using sticks as a tool is common among wild chim- I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of Dr. panzees1. Chimpanzees in their natural habitat use stick Toshisada Nishida. I have known Toshi for over tools to serve a variety of purposes, for example termite fishing2, ant dipping3, pestle pounding4, algae scoop- forty years and his name will always be associated for 5 6 me with the chimpanzees of the Mahale Mountains.