DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Antony Eyton: Limited Edition Prints

Following artist Anthony Eyton’s (B41) visit to Canford in 2021 (see OC Magazine October 2021), we are delighted to confirm that he will be presenting his original picture to the Headmaster in May 2023 to coincide with his 100th birthday. There is a limited edition of 15 signed giclee prints which are now available at a cost of £300 each (unframed). Please visit www.markflawnthomas.com/canford

Dates correct at going to press, further events may be added. Please check our Book Events page and regular Canford Global Connect Digests.

NOVEMBER 2022 Thursday 10th – Nineveh Legacy Lunch 12.00 midday Friday 18th – Canford Online Auction starts

DECEMBER 2022 Sunday 4th – Canford Online Auction Closes Monday 19th – Noel Noel 7.30pm

FEBRUARY 2023 Saturday 4th – 2003 Reunion Lunch 12.00 midday

MARCH 2023 Saturday 4th – 1993 Reunion Lunch 12.00 midday

APRIL 2023 Friday 28th – Centenary Foundation Service – Salisbury Cathedral 10am MAY 2023 Saturday 6th – FCS Real Tennis morning

JUNE 2023 Sunday 4th – FCS Centenary Charity Golf Day Friday 16th – Arboretum Tour with Andrew Powell 6pm Sunday 25th – Centenary Proms in the Park Garden Party Tuesday 28th – Henley Royal Regatta Drinks Party

The OC London Drinks Party will take place in the autumn of 2023 for the centenary year. Further details will follow.

If you would like to attend an event but don’t use the internet, please call the Development Office – 01202 847471. Thank you.

THE GURU OF GOMBE

Society talks to Dr Anthony Collins (F67) about his 50-year involvement with primate research and the Jane Goodall Institute

Half a century is an impressive milestone to reach with any organisation yet, despite having started his research into Tanzanian baboons in 1972, Dr

Anthony Collins is still determined there is much he has left to do and his enthusiasm for his subject remains undimmed.

A spokesperson for the Jane Goodall Institute is also swift to emphasise that this impressive anniversary does not mean its former director is retiring and that Dr Jane Goodall DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of

Peace, ‘hopes he’ll be with JGI for MANY more years to come.’ It’s clear Anthony is a pivotal figure at the JGI. In addition to his primate research, he has been kept busy managing the institute’s Gombe research centre and its staff of 40, as well as being deeply involved in the foundation’s community-centred conservation programme, TACARE, and its global humanitarian and environmental programme for young people, Roots &

Shoots. But more recently, he has stepped back from the lead managerial role to find time to write up his research. Anthony was in his early twenties when he was offered the opportunity to travel to Gombe, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in Tanzania, to conduct a study of baboons alongside Dr Goodall’s chimpanzee research. He confesses that at the time: ‘I believed the popular view of baboons that are fierce, vicious thieves, fighting all the time.’ Having been eager to get involved in the chimpanzee research, he was disappointed to be offered an alternative primate and went into the role ‘with some apprehension’. ‘But once you get to know who’s who, it is amazing what they are doing and the relationships they have with each other and the way they are trying to interfere with one another’s relationships. They are very bright and very sharp, so I very quickly became a baboon person, and my allegiance is still there. I’m in the baboon corner, and I’m waving the flag for them because they have got bad press, so I want to say that baboons are great and if you give them some space and don’t have them in competition with people, on their own they are totally amazing creatures.’

When it comes to watching baboons, ‘there is always something happening,’ says Anthony. ‘Chimpanzees are a bit more serious, and everything unfolds a bit more slowly. If you are with baboons, you do even spend quite a lot of time laughing because you can see disasters are about to happen and then they happen, or unexpected things, so that is an aspect of baboons which is very endearing.’ While chimpanzees can live for up to 55 years, Anthony explains the lifespan for baboons is much shorter, with most dying in their early 20s, and this has allowed him to witness several generations of families during his time at Gombe. ‘It is really great to remember them and know their lives and how different they were.’ Although the personalities are not as ‘obvious as chimps’ they all have different characters and places in society. ‘In the early days I was always thinking if this guy was human, he would be the boss at Rolls Royce or the scraggy guy in the betting shop.’ Speaking about the tendency to anthropomorphise primates, Anthony says that although it is discouraged: ‘You find yourself thinking that guy is in a position I’ve been in and if I were him I would…you can’t help thinking along those lines.’ They have been shaped by similar evolutionary pressures, finding ways to survive and have more children, and he believes: ‘They are a mirror to ourselves’. Like humans, play is important for young baboons and the groups Anthony studies spend a lot of time on the beach of Lake Tanganyika, where food often gets washed up. The youngsters like to play in the water, jumping off the rocks, he reveals. ‘It’s something that really cheers you up. It must be so wonderful to be born a young baboon because there are so many other kids the same age and when the adults are doing other boring things, feeding and grooming, the kids are just playing and it’s a non-stop madhouse. ‘You’ve got these mad groups of infants and juveniles and from time to time they run into the water and chase each other and start to paddle and actually swim quite well without fear. They also dive under water, which is quite extraordinary, and you can see them moving about under water. The climax is when one of them dashes out of the shallows and ambushes another, so it is clearly having a bit of fun and swimming in play like that.’ Although the first baboon researchers believed it was the males who dominated, Anthony explains the groups actually operate as a ‘collaborative matriarchy,’ a society of female relatives with the males moving out on reaching maturity. Within this social system, places are determined by a strict hierarchy. ‘Unlike the males, they don’t waste energy fighting about things,’ he adds, as behaviour is determined by convention. If a high-ranking female and a low-ranking female arrive at food together, ‘that low ranker will just wait and the high ranker take what is her right. They all know where they are in society from the alpha female to the gamma female at the bottom. It is in no way an egalitarian society.’

JGI Chase Pickering

Jaman Rhodes

The early years In addition to time spent in the Scottish countryside, it was childhood visits to Singapore where his father was stationed with the Navy, which sparked Anthony’s lifelong fascination with the natural world. ‘For my brother and I just to see the wildlife and the jungle and all the amazing butterflies, birds, lizards and extreme things like flying snakes – all kinds of wonderful things – we both of us had our heads turned and became naturalists.’ This love of wildlife was fostered by what Anthony describes as the excellent teaching and encouragement he received at Canford, from teachers including Tim Hooker, Peter Dawkins and Peter Lewis. ‘The thing that really set me on a good stead was the Natural History Society which was a very good facility. We were always going up on Canford Heath and catching lizards and snakes and keeping them.’ It was while studying zoology at Cambridge that Anthony became fascinated in primate behaviour. He studied Dian Fossey’s work on gorillas in Rwanda and learned about Dr Goodall’s research through one of his tutors who was her PhD supervisor. Fortuitously, he had also come across her mother, Vanne, during his time at Canford through the School’s Natural History Society and it was this connection which helped him secure an interview for the post at Gombe, encouraged by his former teacher Tim Hooker. ‘Jane was just breaking big worldwide at that time,’ explains Anthony. Her articles were being published in National Geographic and her book, In the Shadow of Man, was published in 1971. After a successful interview in Bournemouth, Anthony travelled to join the research station on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Reflecting on how much has changed during his time at Gombe, Anthony recalls: ‘When I first went there the facilities were much simpler’. Most of the accommodation was in prefab buildings with one big house which served as the office, mess, common room and library for the visiting researchers. He described Dr Goodall’s house as ‘camping indoors’, with mesh instead of glass windows and ‘lizards, spiders and snakes coming in and out freely,’ and says: ‘even today it is still exactly the same’. In 1972, the research station at Gombe was ‘small and simple with very few visitors,’ he recalls. ‘Now it is a renowned national park run by the government,’ with accommodation and restaurants set up by the national park and the research centre is well known, meaning that sometimes boat loads of tourist turn up ‘and it’s hard to turn them away’. One major improvement has been the acceptance of the centre’s work by the local community. In the early years at Gombe, Anthony says there was suspicion about the motives for programmes they encouraged to protect the natural environment, such as tree planting initiatives, as locals feared that this would expand the forest and the government would then come and take over that land as part of the national park. ‘So, they saw us as a threat to their livelihood and it took a very long time to reassure them that was not the agenda at all and that was done by moving slowly and building up good personal relationships with the same people who became trusted and eventually, they started to reap benefits in the villages.’ ‘Jane said you somehow have to put a value on the forest and a value on the wildlife for the people who live there and secondly the thing that destroys the natural environment is people’s poverty. So, you have to help them get out of that.’ By talking to these communities about the type of help they need, tailored assistance is now provided to over 100 villages through JGI’s TACARE project with family planning advice, HIV counselling, scholarships for girls’ education and micro credit loans among its current initiatives.

Managing modern pressures While tourists provide an essential income stream for the national park and local communities, they can cause problems for some of Gombe’s primates. Managing visitor levels is less of an issue for the baboons than for the chimpanzees, explains Anthony. ‘Baboons will steal their sandwiches and bananas and it doesn’t really cause a problem. But some chimps are quite shy and some of them are recent immigrants.’ These newcomers, who are unaccustomed to humans, find proximity with people, especially noisy visitors, more stressful. Added to that is the risk of disease transferal. Stressing how close chimpanzees are biologically to humans, Anthony says: ‘If you dissect me and a chimp it’s the same story inside and our immune systems are the same so almost every disease I can get, a chimpanzee can get. Flu, coughs and colds; god forbid Corona. I can infect a chimp just by coughing. Visitors are supposed to stay 10m away, but chimps don’t always obey the rules and will come up to you.’ Turning to the JGI’s wider work outside Gombe, Anthony points out that becoming a conservationist is an inevitable step for any wildlife researcher. After spending a year or two ‘they automatically become conservationists because they see this animal or place is at risk or under threat...So you can’t be just a pure researcher, you have to think about conserving the natural resources.’ Having realised that young people are the custodians of these resources, much of Dr Goodall’s time is now focused on the Roots & Shoots project, says Anthony, working to increase its membership worldwide. ‘She spent so much time lobbying politicians who are always replaced with other politicians later that she said it is good to work on the government but actually you have to work on the young people as they are the custodians and some of them are the government of tomorrow.’

Bill Wallauer

A word on Dr Anthony Collins from Dr Jane Goodall

He is Tony to me, Anton to most people in Tanzania. He has been working at Gombe for nearly 50 years, since he was a long-haired student. His main study was baboons, but he knows all the chimpanzees and their family histories. He can identify most of the other mammals, birds, insects, trees and plants. He is known as the Guru of Gombe and it is hard to imagine Gombe without him. He is loved by visitors whom he often escorts through the forests and up the slopes of the valleys and he is respected by the Tanzanian staff. He has a huge heart, and if one walks with him through Kigoma, the nearest town, it is amazing how many people stop to greet him – and to ask for help. Help for their children’s schooling, their hospital bills, the funerals of their relatives.They seldom go away empty handed.

Tony is a great storyteller and has a wonderful sense of humour. The times when we sit on the beach (of Lake Tanganyika) to watch the sunset, having our whisky sundowner, are times for sharing the events of the day and reminiscing about the past, sharing memories of the early years of the research when there were many students coming and going. Days that are gone for ever, but kept alive as we reminisce while the sun sinks behind the mountains of the Congo on the other side of the lake.

The house in Gombe where he has lived for years is known as ‘Jane’s house’ – but I spend only a few days a year in Gombe, and apart from the small room that is always mine, the house has become increasingly and fascinatingly Tony’s house.The living room, in addition to books, contains a long shelf upon which are the skulls of countless animals that he has found in the forest, ranging from small rodents to that of a huge bushpig.The house is lit by solar panels, but there is no running water.There is an outhouse hidden in the vegetation.There is an office now along by the tourist accommodation, but mostly Tony works in his bedroom. More than half his bed is covered by piles and piles of paper which have overflowed to fill many shelves. His baboon data is in tin trunks to protect it from damp and insects. If I go to Gombe and Tony is not there, then I feel something is not right, something is missing. Tony keeps abreast of the scientific research done by present and past students. He is invaluable for his help in obtaining research clearance from the government and works closely with our community led conservation programme in the area around Gombe and in neighbouring Burundi. In other words, he is an integral part of all the work done by JGI throughout Tanzania. And during my twice-yearly visits to the country, he is my constant escort as well as my friend. But he is happiest when he is at Gombe, and he loves the special places – such as the waterfall and the Peak – as much as I do. The world is a better place because of Dr Anthony Collins.

Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE Founder - the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace