“A strange, paleskinned primate,” as she once described herself, is sitting in the lobby of Victoria’s Laurel Point Inn.
Jane Goodall is instantly recognizable with her long, grey ponytail and calm and graceful bearing.
At almost 82, the woman who introduced us to our closest animal relatives is looking back on her long career as a groundbreaking scientist, environmental activist and conservationist.
National Geographic, sponsor of Goodall’s pioneering research into the wild chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, has called her a star. Without a doubt, Goodall, a United Nations Messenger of Peace, continues to inspire generations of young people.
That’s why she travels 300 days a year, why she flew from Nebraska Friday night and, three planes later, arrived in Victoria at 1 a.m. Saturday. Travelling is tiring, she agrees.
“I hate it. I can’t bear all this travel,” she says. But it is the way, through interviews and public appearances, that Goodall encourages a new generation of conservationists and spreads her message of hope.
“It’s important for everybody to understand that each one of us can make a difference every single day,” says Goodall. “And if we don’t get together and start thinking differently there won’t be much left for our great-grandchildren.”
In her sold-out talk, Sowing the Seeds of Hope, at the McPherson Playhouse Saturday night, Goodall planned to talk about some of the things she learned from chimpanzees. The importance of early experience counts the same for chimps and humans, she says.
“To have a supportive mother who is affectionate and protective, but not over-protective, gives the child confidence. In chimp society, the individuals with those kinds of mothers do better. The males get a higher rank. The females are better mothers. I think it’s the same for us.”
Goodall is also concerned about the state of the world and what we can do about it.
She does not agree with Canadian scientist David Suzuki, 80, that environmentalists have failed because they are still fighting the same battles they believed were won 30 years ago.
“I don’t think we’ve failed. There is a massive failure in that we’re still destroying the planet. We’re still torturing animals with intensive farms and puppy mills, with shooting wolves from helicopters like they do here in Canada. It’s really horrible — so from that perspective we’ve failed,” Goodall says. “On the other hand, the awareness is way higher than it was. People know now, people are aware.”
The problem with telling people it’s too late is that they will give up, Goodall says.
“It will be too late if we don’t start having a new mindset that links action today with the consequences for future generations, like the indigenous people always did and still try to do,” she says.
Today’s youth is the reason for her gruelling travel schedule. Goodall says she travels to develop her global Roots & Shoots environmental and humanitarian education program. The program, for students from preschool through university, is in 140 countries. There are between 100,000 and 150,000 active groups around the world. According to the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, there are 11 Roots & Shoots groups on Vancouver Island, including three in Victoria.
The program promotes projects — such as getting participants out in the forest, growing vegetables and tree-planting — that make the world better for people, animals and the environment.
“If you can get a critical mass of young people with new values with a different way of thinking about the world, that’s what we need to do,” Goodall says.
People can help by thinking about the consequences of the choices they make each day, she says. “What do you buy? What do you wear? Where did it come from? How was it made? Did it involve cruelty to animals or child slave labour in a far-off country?” she says. “If you have a couple of billion people all thinking in that way, you get the sort of world we need.”
Goodall doesn’t weigh in too heavily on Victoria’s conflict with urban deer. She suggests finding a way to reduce the deer population humanely, such as finding something they eat that stops them breeding.
“We love the deer. It’s not just deer. It’s many, many creatures. It would be lovely to wave a wand and have fewer. But it would be equally lovely to wave a wand and have fewer humans.”
Goodall was in Gombe six weeks ago and realizes how lucky she was to have been there before the chimps were threatened, before the tourists arrived.
“It has lost some of its magic. There are still some parts I love. I do get away and I get to be by myself. But usually, if there are chimps around, there are tourists around.”
The world is filled with problems, says Goodall.
“The important thing to realize is you can’t solve them all. Just do what you can do as hard and responsibly as you can.”
As the interview wraps up, Goodall is treated to an unusual sight. A woman is pushing two dogs in a stroller through the hotel lobby. One is barking loudly.
“Oh my goodness. I’m dog-mad too, but that’s really peculiar,” she says, chuckling. “He doesn’t like anybody in his space.”
Just like her first chimpanzees.
Goodall speaks up for animals
Jane Goodall has always loved animals.
As a child, she read Tarzan of the Apes and Dr. Doolittle. Her childhood dream was to watch free, wild animals living their own, undisturbed lives.
“I wanted to learn things that no one else knew, uncover secrets through patient observation. I wanted to come as close to talking to animals as I could,” she writes in her biographical timeline on the website of the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada.
In May 1956, after leaving high school and working as a secretary for a few years, Goodall was invited to visit a friend’s family farm in Kenya. She worked as a waitress, saving enough money for boat fare. In April 1957, at the age of 23, she travelled to Africa by boat.
The most important event of her visit was meeting anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. He hired Goodall as his assistant after she impressed him with her knowledge of Africa and wildlife. Goodall travelled with Leakey and his wife, Mary, in Tanzania on a fossil-hunting expedition.
Leakey and Goodall began a study of wild chimpanzees on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. The British authorities did not like the idea of a young woman living among wild animals in Africa. So Goodall’s mother, Vanne, volunteered to stay with Goodall for the first three months
“I had a wonderful mother,” Goodall said on her visit to Victoria Saturday. “She was amazing.”
They arrived on the shores of the chimpanzee reserve on July 4,1960. At first, the chimpanzees fled from Goodall in fear. Gradually, they become used to the “strange, pale-skinned primate,” Goodall wrote in her first National Geographic article published in 1963.
Before long, Goodall discovered that chimpanzees hunt down large mammals and eat them. She also observed them making tools to extract termites from their mounds. Until then, only human beings were thought to create tools.
“Now, we must redefine tool, redefine Man or include chimpanzees with humans,” an excited Leaky reportedly said.
As her research became more widely known, Goodall was accepted as a Ph.D ethology candidate at Cambridge University in 1962. The unconventional scientist was criticized for naming her “beloved chimpanzees” — David Greybeard, Flo and Flit — instead of numbering them for her research. She added an emotional component to science, defending her idea that chimpanzees have emotions, minds and personalities.
In 1964, Goodall married National Geographic photographer Hugo van Lawick. They have a son, Hugo, who they nicknamed ‘Grub.’ In 1974, they divorced. In 1975, Goodall married Derek Bryceson, a member of the Tanzanian parliament and and director of its national parks. He died in 1980 after a battle with cancer.
In 1977, Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation. In 1984, she began research dedicated to the study of captive chimpanzees.
On a plane trip over Tanzania in November 1986, Goodall saw the extent of chimp habitat lost to deforestation. She realized she had to leave Gombe to raise awareness to protect the chimps.
In 1991, Jane and 16 Tanzanian students created Roots & Shoots, her institutes’ global environmental and humanitarium education program for youth. On April 17, 2002, the United Nations appointed her to serve as a UN Messenger of Peace.
Goodall continues to travel and give talks about the threats facing chimpanzees and the environmental crises.
