Goodbye to the Indomitable Primatologist and Conservationist, Dr. Jane Goodall
Dr. Jane Goodall, has left this earth which she so loved. Her legacy will be passed on through the improved lives of people and primates via ongoing work of her humanitarian organizations.
Here is a reprint of an interview I conducted with her back in 2012. She was a formidable leader and advocate for the animals she loved, and the people who shared their environment. She believed by improving the lives of people, that the lives of the animals that shared their space would also be improved.
This story is not to be rushed. It is a journey that has taken over 60 yrs; starting with a trip to Kenya, moving on to Tanzania, and encompassing many other countries. Jane Goodall, PhD, a scientist and humanitarian, has opened our minds and hearts to the living creatures with whom we share this planet. I caught up with Dr. Goodall , on a recent stopover in Toronto, Canada.
One of the first things that strikes you about Dr. Goodall is her serene manner. Her hair is pulled back in her signature classic style, that is befitting of her title Dame of the British Empire, awarded to her in 2004. She is a woman who has devoted her life to the study of chimpanzees, but has expanded to humanitarian causes.
A dynamo at age 91, she kept a tour schedule that would make a pop star tremble. Three hundred days of the year were spent on the road, giving speeches and raising funds for her mission of hope. The Jane Goodall Institute, founded in 1977, has branches world-wide, and their goal is to empower people to make a difference for all living things.
Her arrival in Tanganyika, (pre-independent Tanzania), in 1960 was ground breaking back then. When the British colonial authorities, said that she could not be there alone. Her mother came to her assistance. When I asked Dr. Goodall about the early days and scientific discoveries she made about primates:
What did your mother think of the study?
My mother volunteered. She had always supported me from childhood. So when there was a request that Jane can’t come alone. It was Louis Leakey who asked her if she would volunteer, because he said it was really important to have someone who wouldn’t want to take any of the limelight, and somebody who would be really supportive. And of course, she was.
When you were accepted into the chimpanzee group, did they view you as male, female or other?
Female, I think. It seemed to me that they were more relaxed around human women than men. In those early days I used to make people hide inside the tent, because the chimps were coming for bananas, and I made them hide and peep through the window, because I didn’t want the chimps to be scared. This couple was in the tent, and the woman said something, and I was a bit annoyed because they were supposed to be quiet. The chimps just looked up and went on with what they were doing. Then the man said something and they ran. I think it’s the quality of the male voice. It is more like their threat sound. That was really interesting. The female voice is less threatening to them. If you are a person like me, you’re calm and gentle and you are not trying to assert dominance, they pick up on that.
After leaving school, Jane did not have enough money to go to University. When an opportunity came to visit a friend’s family farm in Kenya, Jane moved back home and worked as a waitress to pay the for the ticket. Jane had always dreamed of going to Africa, and seeing the animals she had only read about in books. It was on this trip that she met Dr. Leakey. Later Dr. Louis Leakey would assist in her admission to Cambridge. She was only the eighth person at that time to study for a PhD, without having prerequisites.
How were you received at Cambridge, by the Professors and students, as a protégé of Dr. Leakey, without the usual prerequisites for a Doctoral candidate?
The students resented it, and the professors were like, she’s done it all wrong. What can you expect, she’s never been to college. She’s given the chimpanzees names. How very unscientific. She talking about them having personalities, with minds and feelings. This is accepted today, it wasn’t then.
They thought I did this because I was uneducated. I continued to assert that I was right and now it’s has been accepted.
She was not the only one to assert this idea, but she was at the forefront. There were other previously unknown discoveries made by Dr. Goodall about Chimpanzees.
You made breakthrough discoveries about chimpanzees: one of them was the occurrence of cannibalism. The chimps, Passion and Pom, practised this for two years. Why did they stop?
They stopped because they each had a baby about the same time, so they couldn’t do it any more.
Do you know why they started?
No, it has happened since, I regret to say, but we still don’t understand it. It is only tiny newborns It is almost as though, they do smell, they hate the smell of a stranger, we don’t know if it is that, but after the infant gets to be about two or three weeks, we have never seen another female try to do anything, so I don’t know. It is very rare and unusual.
You have pointed out that one of the key differences between humans and other primates is our ability to use language. What do you think about experiments, such as the one with Koko, the Gorilla, which teach primates to use sign language to communicate with humans?
I find them fascinating. They are intellectually capable of learning these signs and symbols, they can use signs on computers too, and they can learn on them too. The fascinating thing for us is why did we use language? Why did we develop in this way that enables me to tell you about things you have never seen and paint pictures with words, for us to have a discussion.
Because we developed language, that enabled us to have this rapid development of our intellect. The brain looks almost the same. Ours is bigger, and we have this mechanism which has this ability to send robots to Mars. That’s the biggest difference. The explosive development of the intellect, I think ties back to spoken language.
Dr Goodall discovered that outside of her beloved Gombe Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania, there were issues that affected the habitat of all primates including humans.
Projects the Jane Goodall Institute is involved in: alternatives to the bush meat trade, keeping rural Tanzanian girls in school, and much more.
We continue our conversation with Dr. Goodall and discuss the work of her institute and the youth program: Roots and Shoots
Dr. Goodall is a UN Messenger of Peace, she admits that she is not an expert on politics in Africa, and won’t speculate on the causes of so many conflicts in the region.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo,(DRC) the second largest rainforest is now under siege from the illegal bush meat trade, mining, and lack of jobs. Could you elaborate on the ways the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), works with the local communities?
Bush meat is not only in Africa, it is all over, even in the USA, are shooting deer. It’s the commercial trade, which is very different from the sustainable hunting that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years where you shoot what you need. But now they are hunting for money and shooting everything, including chimpanzee mothers with babies, which means we get to look after the orphans.
We have to provide alternatives. We start things like chicken farms, which happened in the refugee camp. One of our youth, with the help of his uncle was able to persuade seventy-five hunters to turn to chicken farming. That was in one year. The problem is so huge, and there is no proper infrastructure in the DRC, so it is very difficult.
In Tanzania, the JGI, tackles issues such as overpopulation and the destruction of the environment. She says:
By introducing water projects, and protecting the watershed that improves the supply of water from the streams. We find ways of restoring fertility to the eroded farm land, ways of using a small area of farmland to produce more food, using better methods of agriculture without chemicals and pesticides.
Then we began working with women. I went with Muhammed Yunus, to Bangladesh, and he introduced me to women who had been the first recipients of credit, they all cried when they thought back to those days.
We introduced micro credit based on the Grameen Bank , principles, and we have nine little centres, so the women take out tiny loans. The criterion is that it must be for a project that is environmentally sustainable. They become empowered, and as it has been shown all over the world as women’s lives improves, family size drops.
As a result of all of that, we provide family planning, we have even had men request a vasectomy. Can you believe it? In the old days, you would have as many children as you could. You would have your plot of land, and when you are old they would feed you. Now, there is no extra land. There are so many people. The young people go off to the towns to try to get a job and often they can’t, so they come back. So the people are beginning to realize the old culture doesn’t work and they don’t want these large families. It’s taken a long time. Many women have understood, and they talk about it and they say now I can do my work and can provide enough for two children and I know if I had five, there would not be enough money to feed them all.
We could have done more if we had more money. The clinic was not big enough. We did get a prize for being leaders in family planning in that part of Tanzania.
Dr. Goodall’s voice is particularly animated when she talks about a recent project in Tanzania that has allowed girls, who would otherwise have dropped out, to remain in school. Its premise is basic and something that is taken for granted in western countries.
We provide as many scholarships as we can to keep girls in school. What is really interesting, is one of the reasons that girls drop out of school at puberty. The state of the latrines in these rural areas is disgusting, rotten planks, the stink is revolting, there is no privacy and so when they start their periods, they drop out. Sometimes the mother says I like having my daughter at home. She can help with the collecting firewood, and so forth.
We introduced VIP (Ventilated Improved Pit Latrines). They are very simple, they don’t flush because you don’t want to waste the water, because there isn’t any water, but they are done in a hygienic way, and so we try to get money to install these in the schools.
JGI Canada is based in the eastern DRC. It is in the heart of the rebel fighting, which is also the area where coltan is mined. This ore is used in laptops, computers and digital technology. Dr. Goodall, says:
There is always going to be mining with those rich minerals. We want to encourage the responsible miners who are not destroying the environment, who are paying proper wages, who are not going out to shoot animals. That is the campaign that JGI Canada is involved in supporting with this bill against conflict minerals. That is one of the things Canadians can do to help.
What is the aim of the Roots and Shoots Program?
It empowers youth. It offers them smorgasbord of projects. It’s for all ages and they choose three areas: one to help people, one to help the environment, and one to help animals, or one big project which helps everything.
You are on the road are on the road for a phenomenal amount of time. How do you relax?
By reading a book. the times I relax are in between trips, the few days when I am back at home in Bournemouth. Once a year I get to see the migration of the Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska. That’s relaxing.
If you had to do it all again, would you change anything?
Not really, I learned lessons along the way. You always make mistakes. You have to make some mistakes to learn from them. There are some things I might have done differently if I had known, because they are a bad thing to do, like the banana feeding. But if I had not done that probably the whole study would come to an end.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
Probably starting Roots and Shoots. Also, helping people to understand that there isn’t a sharp line between us and the animal kingdom. I think those two things.
Where do you feel most at home?
I feel very much at home in the Gombe forest. I have a few days there. Otherwise it’s the house I grew up in; the books, the memories of my mother and grandmother, that is real home.
R.I.P Dr. Jane Goodall
