In 1960, a young Jane Goodall arrived in Gombe, Tanzania, to study wild chimpanzees. But decades later, a quiet flight over the region changed how she thought about saving them. Below her, Gombe National Park was still brilliantly green. The hills around it, however, had lost much of their forest. Local families had cleared trees for farmland, charcoal and income. Without the roots to hold the soil, rain washed it straight into Lake Tanganyika. Erosion and landslides became serious problems. The people were struggling — and so was the whole ecosystem around them.
In 1994, the Jane Goodall Institute launched the TACARE project, originally named for the Lake Tanganyika Catchment, Reforestation and Education project. It started in just 12 villages near Gombeament. But the goal was never simply to protect chimpanzees. Instead, Tanzanian teams sat down with village leaders to understand local needs and craft plans for restoring the land together.
That idea became known simply as Tacare, and it placed communities at the center of conservation. Instead of treating people as an obstacle, the project made them part of the solution. By 2021, the results were striking: forest cover inside the community reserves had risen by 66 percent across the area. The trees came back because the people who live there owned the plan — not outsiders who told them what to do.
One of Tacare's least obvious tools turned out to be maps. Not the kind that simply show where forests and villages sit. In Tacare, maps became a shared visual language. Satellite images let communities look closely at their own surroundings and spot places that matter to them. Local knowledge was recorded and connected with that imagery. Scientific data and geospatial analysis added another layer, helping teams understand problems and imagine nature-based solutions. A farmer often knows details no satellite can capture, and a map became the place where science and lived experience meet.
The process moves through stages: engagement, listening, understanding)Skip, then facilitation. But it always starts with relationships. A forest plan involves trees and soil — but also farmers, families, village leaders and decisions about how land is used. Tacare recognizes that those pieces are all connected. The approach later expanded to Uganda, the Republic of Congo, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo)Skip, carrying the same central lesson: protecting wildlife means understanding the people and landscapes that surround it.
That lesson travels well beyond Tanzania, thousands of miles from the United States. Environmental problems rarely stop at the edge of a protected area. Forest loss, erosion, water quality and wildlife habitat are all shaped by neighbors. Maps and data are powerful, but they become most useful when combined with the knowledge of people living on the land. Tacare proves that when you put people at the center, the green tends to come back.