ME FRODO, YOU JANE

Dr Jane Goodall thinks apes are almost

human, so why, asks Aidan Hartley, doesn't

she punish one of her chimps for killing a boy?

DR JANE GOODALL, the chimpanzee expert, wants legal human rights to be extended to great apes, because she claims that they are so similar to us. Why, then, has Frodo, the alpha male of her chimp study group in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, just got away with the macabre murder of a human child?

The story begins on a morning in May. The wife and toddler son of Moshi Sadiqi, a park attendant, were collecting firewood in Gombe, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Like many staff families, they lived inside the park. The pair ventured into the rainforest. Frodo struck without warning. He swung out of the jungle, snatched up the boy and, as the distraught mother looked on, retreated into the trees. Here, Frodo flung his prey against the branches repeatedly, until the boy was as limp as a rag doll. The mother ran for help and park rangers rushed to the scene. Frodo had by this time disembowelled the boy and eaten part of his head.

Goodall, who arrived to study Gombe's chimps in 1960, departed from scientific convention by christening her apes with human names rather than with serial numbers. She conferred on them all the characteristics of people, creating in her films and books the world's longest-running animal soap opera. With her trademark grey ponytail, she ascended to become a queen among animal-rights activists. She calls for 'some kind of fundamental rights within the legal system' for chimps. based on the common heritage with Homo sapiens of 98 per cent of genes, together with chimp cognition, emotions and games-playing. 'The line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, once thought to be so clear, has become blurred,' she says.

Her position is widely supported, though not in Africa, where leaders have been too busy exterminating their human populations to ponder animal rights. Rather, her support comes from fans in the rich world and the United Nations. Jane Goodall, CBE, has this year won the Mahatma Gandhi/Martin Luther King Award for Non-Violence, at UN headquarters. The UN also appointed her a 'peace ambas sador', praising her for 'fostering human rights and the liberation of the human spirit'. On her travels, Goodall carries a softtoy 'peace' chimp holding a banana, which she claims two million people have stroked.

If chimps deserve basic legal rights, then I assumed that, by the same argument, Frodo should face justice for murdering Moshi Sadiqi's son. I asked the Jane Goodall Institute (MI) what action was being taken. Would he face some sort of chimpanzee trial? 'The Tanzanian authorities have decided not to punish Frodo for behaving like a chimp in his own territory,' replied Dilys MacKinnon, executive director of JGI in Britain. 'The child's family have said that they do not blame Frodo. . Government officials came to talk to those involved and to express condolences. It appears that all concerned have been very understanding.'

Even if Frodo were merely a wild animal in his own territory, one might expect him to be put to sleep like a dangerous dog. In Tanzania, if elephants plunder peasants' crops, the state game department responds by shooting the offending herd's ringleaders. This is despite the wide acceptance that pachyderms are, together with chimps and whales, the most sentient of creatures after humans.

But Frodo is no mere animal; he's a global celebrity. If Hello! had a beast edition. Frodo would feature on the cover in a tuxedo. He's a star of the silver screen with a filmography dating back to the 1970s. His latest billing is in Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees, an Imax movie premiering around the globe this year. The JGI's website publicises the film, but not Frodo's recent behaviour. Born in 1976 to mother Fifi, Frodo grew up to become Gombe's heavyweight at 120 lbs. He seized power as alpha male of his Kasekela clan in 1998, after his elder broth er and former don, Freud, contracted mange. Frodo rules as a dictator, assisted by his vizier, the dastardly Goblin. He chews his upper hp when psyching himself up for violence. He rolls boulders down hills. He throws stones with deadly accuracy. The visitors he's beaten up include the Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson. He once pummelled Jane's head so hard that he nearly broke her neck.

Forget the PG Tips adverts; chimps are hardcore. They hunt and eat primate meat. They practise cannibalism. Killing excites them. They mutilate prey. Females copulate with all-comers. Bloodletting between clans can be so systematic that one feud was dubbed the Four Years' War.

What is more, the murder of Moshi Sadiqi's son was not unique in 'terms of attacks on human children. 'Two incidents involving children occurred quite a few years before research in the park started in 1960,' MacKinnon told me. 'A baby was taken for food [and] a seven-year-old boy was wounded when he rescued his infant sister.' Goodall's own son, Grub, was terrorised by a chimp called Flint in the 1970s. Grub spent much of his childhood in a cage for protection and grew up loathing chimps so much that today he's a shark fisherman.

There are scientists who reject Goodall's idea of our consanguinity with chimps. In his recent book What it Means to be 98% Human, the molecular anthropologist Jonathan Marks reveals that we share 40 per cent of our genes with fish and 25 per cent with dandelions. Should rights be extended to goldfish? Marks argues that the 2 per cent that divides us from chimps is what makes all the difference.

Some conservationists criticise Goodall for establishing a string of 'orphanages' for rescued baby chimps. They believe her time would be better spent focusing on the protection of wild chimps' remaining habitat, which is vanishing fast. In Africa, there are now 150,000 chimps, compared with two million a century ago. The ape trade for 'bush meat', pets and laboratory-testing is not so much to blame as is the loss of habitat. 'There is a very high level of deforestation causing massive soil erosion, landslides, reduced fertility,' says MacKinnon. MI aims to address the habitat problem by helping 33 villages around Gombe. MacKinnon says that 'conservation is impossible unless the basic needs of humans in the area are met'.

'Community' conservation is a touchyfeely policy, but we don't know whether it works long-term. Zimbabwe, testing ground for the idea, is witnessing mass destruction of its parks thanks to Robert Mugabe. Habitat isn't sacred if local communities and politicians have a direct stake — and when dangerous animals live among villages, Africans justifiably kill them to defend themselves and their crops. There's no fail-safe answer, but the best solution may be for private foundations to buy up conservation areas and register them in the West. African dictators — even Mugabe — are financial-aid junkies, so the idea is to tie the inviolability of private conservation areas to aid packages, thus preventing governments from stealing the land. Humans will be on one side of an electrified fence, animals in their own territory on the other. The plan needs substantial funding, but most of us now agree that rainforests and chimps are part of a global heritage, and are not 'owned' by local people.

For now, the tiny remaining forest inside Gombe is a magnet for employees' camp followers. 'It is not safe for small children to be in the park, as has been stressed repeatedly,' MacKinnon told me. Why, then, do such large numbers of children inhabit the park to justify a school — built, indeed, with money from the British High Commission? 'It was not a good idea to build a school in the park,' replied MacKinnon, whose organisation 'opposed the plan'. Nevertheless, construction went ahead on the say-so of Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa), the state body that officially runs Gombe. MacKinnon said that Tanapa is compensating Moshi Sadiqi's family. The figure is unknown, but it isn't likely to be much in a nation, which, thanks to years of Afro-socialism, has a lower average annual per capita income than the price of a box of decent Cuban cigars.

To me, the moral is that Frodo is wild, and he should be given the space to be wild. He's no human. If he were, he'd be sent to Broadmoor. Instead, this ape's on his way to Broadway.