Japanese university students and scholars on primates will set up an organization to support the research activities of famed British chimpanzee scholar Jane Goodall as well as to help conserve forests in Africa, group members said.
The nonprofit group, the Jane Goodall Institute-Japan, will be set up in Tokyo in November to give lectures and conduct fundraising campaigns to help conserve African rain forests that are home to large numbers of chimpanzees, they said.
Last November, a group led by Japanese university students set up a committee to prepare for the establishment of the organization.
The head of the committee's secretariat, Naoyuki Miyabe, 21, a junior at Keio University in Tokyo, said, "Through this activity, we hope to raise public awareness of the current state of Africa as well as environmental and other relevant issues."
Goodall began research on wild chimpanzees in 1960 in Tanzania. To support her research, the Jane Goodall Institute was established in 1976 in the United States.
Similar institutes have since been established in nine other countries.