Local Voices, Local Choices

Discover the stories behind Jane Goodall’s visionary approach to community-led conservation. You know of Jane Goodall’s work with wild chimpanzees and her lifelong career advocating for environmental justice. But just as transformative is her work empowering local communities that live on the edge of human settlement to act to protect their natural resources—or to risk losing them forever. Local Voices, Local Choices: The Tacare Approach to Community-Led Conservation is the story of the Jane Goodall Institute’s holistic approach to conservation, which puts the local people in charge of preserving their surrounding ecosystems. Rather than conservationists leading the effort and imposing their solutions, local communities that live in the affected regions make their own decisions. Working with science and technology and with the support of conservationists, these communities grow to understand their human impact on the environment. By choosing to adopt sustainable livelihoods, they decide their own path into the future, finding ways to balance their environmental impact with their communities’ needs. Story by story, Local Voices, Local Choices brings readers into the diverse perspectives behind this approach to community-driven conservation—not only those of JGI staff and program partners but also, and equally, those of the local people who lead these initiatives. Read about: The origins of the Tacare approach, originally designed as a 1994 reforestation project with an abbreviation pronounced “ta-CAR-reh” A retired village member keeping the knowledge of medicinal plants alive in his community Spiritual and cultural story-holders who are vital to the recording and preservation of their traditional ecological knowledge Local people participating as forest monitors, village health workers, beekeepers, small-business owners, and educators of the next generation Former poachers turned advocates for sustainable land management Written for conservationists, fans of Jane Goodall, and readers interested in environmental issues, Local Voices, Local Choices is a vibrant expression of Jane Goodall’s vision and her hope that the Tacare approach will be understood and adopted wherever there is a need for genuine community-driven conservation. Local voices matter, and their choices can make all the difference for generations to come.