‘Window closing to avert climate change’
THE window is closing to make a substantial difference to climate change and everyone must do their bit to limit its impact, conservationist Jane Goodall has warned.
The founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace is the subject of a new documentary about her life living with chimps in the African jungle in the 1950s.
The primatologist, now 83, was a 26-year-old secretary when her boss, Dr Louis Leakey, sent her to observe chimpanzees in the wild and the film pulls from 100 hours of footage by cameraman Hugo van Lawick, who would go on to become her husband.
Dr Goodall said she has been horrified by the destruction to their habitats and believes not enough is being done to protect them.
She told the Press Association: “We are working very hard, the Jane Goodall Institute, to do more, and there are people working on it, but it’s never enough because the foresters are working away too, cutting down the forests to sell the wood or for mining.
“The real tragedy is the way that the chimp numbers have decreased since I began the study.
“In some countries climate change is having a major effect on forests and on chimp foods and things like that.
“We are in the state where the window is closing on our being able to make a substantial difference in slowing down climate change.”