EXPECTATIONS
After decades researching chimpanzees, Jane Goodall’s message remains the same: there’s hope for the planet and its inhabitants, if we take action. She speaks with Britt Mann.
IT’S been more than 30 years since Jane Goodall left the forests of Tanzania for a life on the road.
The dame, doctor and grandmother, whose name is synonymous with her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees, celebrated her 83rd birthday this month. Long past retirement age, she’s still travelling for about 300 days of the year, as comfortable rubbing shoulders with world leaders as she is speaking to primary school pupils.
Across decades, across audiences, Goodall’s message remains the same: that there’s hope for the planet and its inhabitants, if individuals take action to save them.
In June, Goodall will travel to New Zealand to host lectures in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
Speaking by phone from a resort in British Columbia – another stop on her never-ending schedule of engagements – Goodall told Sunday News that when she first travelled to Africa, she didn’t set out to be a crusader for conservation.‘‘I set out to learn about chimps.’’
During Goodall’s 20-odd years in Tanzania she discovered chimpanzees were not vegetarians, and that the apes were capable of hunting weaker species, and planning violent attacks on their own. They hugged, kissed, and had strong emotional attachments to their mothers. They even went through adolescence.
But it was Goodall’s discovery that chimpanzees used and made tools – faculties previously considered the preserve of humans – that is today considered one of the great achievements of 20th-century scholarship.
Her mentor Leakey’s response to the revelation was profound: ‘‘Now we must redefine man, redefine tools, or accept chimpanzees as humans.’’
In 1986, Goodall attended a conference of primatologists in Chicago. There, she had been shocked to learn forests were disappearing wherever chimpanzee research was being conducted.
‘‘I went to the conference as a scientist,’’ she says. ‘‘And left as an activist.’’
She cites the decision to leave Tanzania for a life of hotel rooms and long-haul flights as among the most difficult she’s made.
For Goodall, the world’s most intractable problems are interconnected. She lends her mana to causes ranging from deforestation and chimpanzee trafficking, to genetically modified crops and climate change. Recently, she’s called US President Donald Trump’s bid to abolish the United States’ climate change policies ‘‘immensely depressing’’. (Last year, she told a reporter Trump’s behaviour in debates reminded her of her former hairy research subjects.)
Goodall’s message – idealistic, audacious, even – hasn’t changed over time, though she says it has grown in breadth, and depth.
‘‘When I was talking about the use of primates in medical research, I didn’t feel it was enough to just read the literature to raise people’s awareness,’’ she says.
‘‘I felt I had to go and see it with my own eyes, which took me to see some horrendous things. It means that you have a right to talk about it, because you’ve seen it, and felt it.’’
Hope permeates Goodall’s activism. When she first started raising awareness of conservation issues, she noticed those she spoke to felt paralysed by the weight of the problems.
She was particularly disturbed the despair was so obvious in young people. ‘‘Of course, if our youth lose hope, that’s the end.’’
Goodall has spent more than three decades working to prevent this. Her youth-led community action programme, Roots & Shoots, began in Tanzania in 1991, and has since spread to 97 other countries, including New Zealand. The programme encourages young people to be active in caring for the people, animals and environments that surround them
It’s a mark of Goodall’s commitment to her cause that New Zealand continues to feature on her radar. The June tour will be her fourth visit here in a decade and she has links to a number of Kiwi conservation projects.
In 2014, Goodall stroked a tuatara and hand-fed a kea at Auckland Zoo. Later that year, she named a newborn baby chimpanzee at Wellington Zoo. (Kitwe remains the youngest chimp there.)
A cast of her hand also features in a bronze sculpture in which it grasps the hand cast from another Wellington Zoo chimp. The artwork is inscribed with the phrase: ‘‘Together we can change the world.’’
Goodall also devoted a chapter of her book Hope For Animals and Their World to the conservation
Hundreds and thousands of young people around the world can break through, and can make this a better world.’ JANE GOODALL