Jane Goodall, global treasure

MOST VISITING PERFORMERS and presenters in their mid-80s tend to be making something of a farewell tour, but Jane Goodall is not just any old performer or presenter. She arrived in Australia this May, for public appearances in three cities, as lively, engaging, inspirational and visionary as ever – and with her eye more on the future (ours) than the past (hers).

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make,” was the marketing line behind her Rewind the Future lecture tour, but there was no marketing spin involved.

Goodall remains one of the most passionate, articulate and considered of conservationists, with as much interest in the people of planet Earth as in the chimpanzees of Africa that have been her life’s work and shaped her view of life.

The Jane Goodall story is well known. It will be 60 years next year that she arrived in Gombe Stream National Park, in what is now Tanzania, largely untrained but with the enormous potential that the famous archaeologist and palaeontologist Louis Leakey saw in her.

Her work was to revolutionise not just what we know about chimpanzees and their behaviour, but also the way we go about science. And her impact has spread far beyond the confines of Gombe Stream.

The Jane Goodall Institute is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs, its global youth program, Roots & Shoots, has 10,000 members in a hundred countries, and Goodall herself remains a tireless activist and environmental advocate.

She spends much of each year travelling the world – and is showing no signs of slowing up.