Jane Goodall’s enduring campaign to help all animals

Jane Goodall is exhausted. The iconic ethologist made her reputation by studying chimpanzees in the wild. But Pearson Airport has almost defeated her.

“It took almost two hours to get through immigration,” she sighs as we meet in her downtown Toronto hotel room.

Goodall is in Toronto briefly to advocate on behalf of animals. She was in Los Angeles the day before. She is on her way to London, Ont. to give a speech.

At the age of 84, she is on the road for more than 300 days a year. She says she has come to hate flying.

Her interests span both sides of the animal movement. On the one hand, she is a tribune for species, like primates, whose very existence is threatened. On the other, she supports the rights of more common animals — like cows and pigs — to live in peace free of pain.

Intensive, or factory, farming she says is one of humankind’s worst activities. “People get upset about eating dogs,” she says. “But that’s not any worse than eating pigs.”

Goodall is best known for her research on chimpanzees. In the early 1960s, she lived among them in what is now Tanzania and studied their behaviour.

Her findings, that chimps are more like their human cousins than anyone had predicted, revolutionized the study of animals.

In particular, she found that chimps — like humans — make and use tools. More darkly, she also found that chimps are prone to the worst of human vices, such as committing deliberate murder.

From these findings, it wasn’t too much of a leap to notice that primates aren’t the only animals with human characteristics. Goodall was soon taken with the plight of animals, such as chickens and pigs, who are condemned to grim but short lives in factory farms. She became a vegetarian.

And from there it wasn’t too much of a leap to recognize that animals should have rights.

What kind of rights? Goodall tries to be practical.

“Some rights don’t make any sense (for non-humans),” she says. “Their societies are different.”

But other rights, such as freedom from torture, she says, make a great deal of sense. Goodall is on the board of the Non Human Rights Project, an organization attempting to change the legal status of animals from property to “persons.”

How is the struggle for protecting endangered species going?

“It’s pretty bad,” says Goodall. China, she says, is trying to ban the import of ivory as part of a worldwide effort to protect animals such as elephants. But the illegal ivory trade is merely being diverted to neighbouring nations.

I ask whether countries are serious about protecting endangered species. She shrugs. “Some are; some aren’t.”

But she says gains are being made in the fight for animal welfare. “There’s a lot more awareness,” she says. “Vegetarianism is growing around the world.”

And then there is science. Researchers are finding that the most unlikely animals exhibit characteristics that used to be attributed to humans alone.

We now know, she says, that octopuses use coconut and clam shells to construct houses on the ocean floor. Bees, she says, not only can use tools but can learn how to use them by watching other insects.

She travels to wherever she thinks she may do some good — including North Korea (the worst place in the world to find vegetarian food, she says). She talks to world leaders and has spent an hour with Justin Trudeau (she can’t remember whether anything concrete came from that meeting but says the prime minister was very charming).

She has no desire to meet U.S. President Donald Trump (“I don’t think I could make an impression; he changes his mind day to day.”) But otherwise she’s open to talking to just about anybody. As long as it helps animals.