Jane Goodall educates, entertains Kelowna audience
A packed Kelowna Community Theatre witnessed evolution on Saturday night — not the parallel evolution of humans and chimpanzees but of renowned scientist-now-activist Jane Goodall.
And it was all thanks to Nancy (nee McKenzie) Moloney, formerly of Kelowna.
Moloney is now CEO of the Australian wing of the Jane Goodall Institute. When she learned the world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees and legendary conservationist planned a Canadian tour, Moloney told the Canadian wing: “She has to come to Kelowna,” a starstruck Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran told more than 850 people at the theatre.
The result: with tickets ranging from $200 VIP (front rows, reception) to $115 and $85, the Birthday Tour presentation in Kelowna raised $99,000 for the institute’s programs and projects, announced Andria Teather, CEO of the Canadian wing.
The enthusiastic crowd got more than its money’s worth, though, with a two-hour uplifting presentation as the 83-year-old Goodall cracked numerous jokes as well as “touched, inspired, educated and entertained.”
Where else would someone start a serious presentation with an ear-tingling “greeting of the day” in chimpanzee that echoed throughout the theatre?
It’s a very important call, explained the British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist and UN Messenger of Peace.
Chimpanzees scattered around their home territory in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania can then identify the location of everyone in their troop.
Born in 1934 in London, England, Goodall was fascinated by animals and at 18 months brought earthworms to bed with her.
Her doting mother, who encouraged her every step of the way, explained they would die if left there. At four-and-a-half years, Goodall spent all day in a chicken coop to discover how hens laid eggs.
At eight years, she was entranced by the Dr. Doolittle books about a kind-hearted country physician who learned how to talk to animals. And then, she fell in love with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes who “married the wrong Jane.”
Everyone laughed at this youngster who wanted to move to Africa, study animals and write books. “Dream about something you can achieve,” they said.
Goodall’s mother, on the other hand, told her to work hard and never give up on her dreams.
Her family couldn’t afford to send her to university, but at secretarial school, a friend invited the then-23-year-old on a trip to Kenya.
Those secretarial skills got her a job with famous paleontologist Louis Leakey, “a magical time” when his team of experts on mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and plants could answer all (or many) of her questions.
“I was the person he had been looking for (for years) to study chimpanzees,” she recalled, since he believed humans had an ape-like ancestor six million years ago.
Armed with little more than a notepad, a pair of binoculars, and that dream of living in Africa and observing wildlife, she had the famous breakthrough moment when she witnessed a chimpanzee use a tool ó a stick — to pull termites out of a termite mound.
Her extraordinary scientific breakthroughs in animal behaviour countered the long-held belief that only humans made and used tools. When skeptics dismissed her findings, documentary films by National Geographic wildlife photographer (Dutch nobleman and future husband) Baron Hugo van Lawick demonstrated chimpanzees have complex social lives, personalities and intelligence similar to humans.
In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a global wildlife and environment conservation organization headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. Goodall credits the 1986 Understanding Chimpanzees conference, hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences, with shifting her focus from observation of chimpanzees to a broader and more intense concern with animal-human conservation.
The second half of Goodall’s presentation on Saturday focused on the institute’s work with young people in particular through the Roots & Shoots program. And she remains optimistic about solving the world’s extreme poverty, unsustainable lifestyle and human population growth.
Although it is the planet’s most intelligent species destroying its habitat, Goodall says “the indomitable human spirit” provides her with hope.