In its more than 15 meters high, it dominated a good part of the Sanctuary. By its structure passed hawks, vultures, toucans, parrots, owls and dozens of other bird species. We met 18 years ago when we entered the main gate he dominated in accessing a site of three acres, which began the great adventure of our lives and that gave rise to the Sanctuary of Great Apes and Felines of Sorocaba.

His name was Jatoba (Hymenae courbarí), a majestic tree that produced fruits that chimpanzees worshiped. That property of three acres became the Old Ranch Jatoba, in recognition to that awesome tree.

When we took over the site 18 years ago, a toucan and a blue and yellow macaw were installed there without legal cover, but aroused our desire for sheltering wildlife.

Those two birds made us legalize the property with IBAMA and extended its reach to all kinds of wild animals. Thus began the Conservationist Breeding Old Jatoba, which in the early years devoted to the care for monkeys and birds that our environmental authorities sent us to preserve as Custodian.

Twelve years ago it came into our lives the first chimpanzee, a three-month-old baby whom we called Guga, the founder of Great Apes and Felines Sanctuary, which hosts over 250 animals today.

The Old Jatoba, from its height, watched everything that happened there and every being that went there passed beneath it, to incorporate to the squad. This Old Jatoba had a hard life. Several rays fell on it, charring some of its branches. But it always had the strength to recover and new green branches, full of fruits, appeared incessantly.

Around it, what was a open field became an area full of enclosures. The group of Guga, Monica and Martin, Jimmy and their adoptive babies, they all watched with respect and admiration, and asked their fruits.

On June 26^th, in the midst of a storm, in the deep darkness of the night in Sorocaba, the great Old Jabota broke in half, falling forever, as happened all these years with some of primates who also succumbed after crossing under its domain.

The death of a tree is, to us and to everyone who met it, a great tragedy. I never thought of having to do the obituary of that tree. As a living being, strong and challenging, today we have to give it a grave. A rest of it, about 5 feet tall, stood still, perhaps to make us never forget that our trees are our greatest treasure, and we have a commitment to fight for their lives and existence, as well as we fight for our primates and other wildlife, whom Old Jatoba was able to give all its support.