Generation gap keeps Goodall busy
The 83-year-old chimpanzee expert is spreading a message of hope during her visit to New Zealand.
Predictions of revolution come generally from young romantics or middle-aged cynics convinced the promises of Lenin and Castro were crushed and perverted before their true magnificence was revealed.
When they come from a dame of the British Empire, a distinguished scientist in her 80s, at one stage a baroness listed in Debrett’s, they carry a certain resonance.
‘‘Sometimes, I think revolution is going to be inevitable,’’ says Jane Goodall.
Dr Goodall – Dame Jane since 2004 – is a truly legendary figure among environmentalists. Her reputation for scientific rigour and insight was dramatically demonstrated in 1971 with the publication of In The Shadow Of Man, a pioneering study of wild chimpanzees that revolutionised the world’s understanding of our primate cousins. The book remains a must-read for anyone interested in biology or evolution.
Goodall’s fascination with animals and Africa was fuelled by an invitation in 1957 from a school friend to visit her family’s farm in the Kenyan highlands; within a few months, she had met famous anthropologist Louis Leakey and in 1960, Leakey sent Goodall to Lake Tanganyika in East Africa to study the area’s wild chimpanzee population. He believed that a ‘‘mind uncluttered by academia’’ might yield a fresh perspective.
Her observation that chimps stripped leaves off twigs to fish out termites from nests overturned accepted science that only humans made and used tools.
Leakey arranged for Goodall, despite having no undergraduate degree, to take a doctorate at Cambridge University, before she returned to Tanzania to continue her research.
Goodall is currently on a speaking tour which arrives in New Zealand this week, with stops in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. At her last stop, in Australia, she essayed her individual chimpanzee call, before talking extensively about her first meetings with chimps and how she discovered they used primitive tools as well as the academic criticism she’d received for naming them.
‘‘I couldn’t talk about them having personalities, I couldn’t talk about them having minds capable of thinking and I absolutely couldn’t talk about them having emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, grief and so on because those were unique to us. At that time, it was thought in science ... that there was a sharp line dividing us and the animal kingdom.’’
Since those days, Goodall has founded an eponymous research and education institute, been heavily involved in animal rights and welfare movements around the globe, garnered a swag of honorary degrees and received accolades from organisations as diverse as the United Nations and Walt Disney.
In 1991, the Jane Goodall Institute kicked off a youth education scheme called (a little unfortunately, if you understand modern slang) Roots And Shoots. It now has 150,000 groups in 98 countries, creating, perhaps, the children of the revolution.
‘‘If you care about the environment, and you actually care about your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren, what we’re doing now is a path to total ecosystem collapse and disaster,’’ says Goodall.
‘‘There is no question about that. If our voices are not enough – if there aren’t enough people renovating destroyed landscapes and saving endangered species – we will face the planet’s sixth mass-extinction.
‘‘It does need to have major change,’’ she says, hinting again at revolution. ‘‘How that’s going to come about? I don’t know. I’m not a prophet. I just know that if we all lose hope, we will just give up.’’
Goodall talks a lot about hope, and shows no signs of giving up. At 83, an age when most people are taking things a bit easy, she is on the road and in public for 300 days a year.
The themes of her tour are the reasons for optimism, and the role of young people in generating them. She believes that a range of particularly human factors – including generational change and ‘‘the indomitable human spirit of people who tackle the impossible and won’t give up’’ – will eventually overcome shortsighted politicians and cashed-up coal miners and save the world.
She points to climate change marches – in which she participates – as evidence. She also points to her youth groups, and to the fact that Gombe – the Nigerian national park in which she first studied chimps – is these days safe and surrounded by a human population that protects rather than poaches its inhabitants.
She is impressed by the power of mobile phones and what she delightfully calls ‘‘i-Tablets’’ to galvanise mass action.
‘‘We now have the wherewithal to get people who feel passionate about something to join together in a way that wasn’t possible before, and to give voices a chance to hear each other,’’ she says.
‘‘You can draw strength from the knowledge that there are so many people.
‘‘If enough come in and make their voices heard, eventually maybe it’s going to make some difference on companies and legislators.
‘‘I mean, right now it seems almost impossible in this era of Trump but, you know, you must never give up. You just have to go on trying.’’
Hence her increasing focus on getting young people involved in environmentalism. Roots And Shoots operates from kindergarten through to high schools, with each group encouraged to take on three active projects.
She is much heartened by the fact that every time she visits a participating school, she sees ‘‘young people with shining eyes rushing to tell Dr Jane what they’ve been doing to make the world better’’.
Therein, she adds, hope resides. ‘‘One reason that makes people feel very apathetic is the thought there are all these huge problems and there’s nothing I can do about it. It was that message that caused me to start the Roots And Shoots programme. I don’t know what sort of window of time we have before we’re on the path of no return. My hope comes from the determination of young people.’’
Whether youthful intent, school programmes, inspiring speeches, considered responses – in short, civilised behaviour – will turn out to be enough remains to be seen. Perhaps, in the end, the battle will be fought less in classrooms and more across barricades.
‘‘Do we need a revolution? It would be sad, wouldn’t it?’’ she said. ‘‘If it’s a revolution in thought, that would be good. But revolutions do tend to get bloody, don’t they?’’ – Fairfax
An Evening With Dr Jane Goodall will be held at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre on June 26 and Christchurch’s Isaac Theatre Royal on June 29. Book at Ticketek.