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LADY OF CHANGE Jane Goodall continues to make waves across the world with her leadership, compassion, intellect and energy.
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COURTESY JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE / PHOTOGRAPHY MICHAEL NEUGEBAUER
Jane Goodall with 'Mr H', a toy monkey given to her by her friend, Gary Haun. Mr H has travelled with her in over 60 countries and territories, including Hong Kong last November.
PHOTOGRAPHY GARETH GAY
STORY MAGGIE CHEN
Mention the name ‘Jane Goodall’ and famous images of Goodall with a chimpanzee – or peering intently through binoculars within a dense African forest– are likely to immediately come to mind. Since commencing her groundbreaking research at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park in the 1960s, Goodall’s work – and her iconic story – has captivated the imagination of millions: first through the lenses of National Geographic, and then other media across the globe. Goodall’s work revolutionised our understanding of chimpanzees and other animals: the methods she pioneered are still being used by scientists today. But her work and influence have
expanded far beyond her original field studies. Goodall, who turns 81 this month, has authored or co-authored dozens of books. A renowned primatologist and conservationist, she has received various accolades. These include being made a UN Ambassador of Peace in 2002, and a Dame of the British Empire in 2004. Far from resting on her laurels, Goodall – or “Dr Jane”, as she is affectionately known – spends most of her time traversing the globe meeting young people, activists, businesspeople and politicians in order to spread awareness and instigate action on a gamut of conservation issues that galvanise her. In fact, Goodall is on the road for about 300 days each year.
It seems like a punishing schedule for anyone, let alone an octogenarian. How does she do it? The reply she gives, during an interview at the British Council’s premises in Hong Kong last November prior to her speaking engagement there, is straightforward. “Just day by day,” she says softly. It’s clear that the petite lady before us is a woman of action who spends little time navel-gazing. Asked whether she had expected to achieve as much as she has, she says, “I don’t think I ever really deliberately sat down and thought … I’m a bit like, you know, ‘Here’s a good idea, I’m just going to push and push and push. But it certainly [is] amazing to see it, retrospectively.”
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impressed that I knew so much, even though I was newly arrived from England, because I’d spent hours in the Natural History Museum in London and reading books,” she says. Leakey offered her a job as his secretary. One summer, Goodall was taken along to an excavation at Olduvai Gorge, where Louis and his wife, Mary, had been going every summer searching for remains of early man. Goodall found the experience, which included seeing giraffes, antelopes and even a young male lion, “a bit scary, but also very exciting.” It was then, Goodall is certain, that Leakey made up his mind to choose her to pursue a study of chimpanzee behaviour. Believing that chimpanzees and humans had a common ancestor, Leakey thought that if Goodall could observe behaviour in chimpanzees similar to that of humans, maybe those similarities were present in a common ancestor. In the summer of 1960, 26-year-old Goodall found
A LIFELONG PASSION
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INSET Jane Goodall with one of her chimpanzee research subjects in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, in 1972 .
COURTESY JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE
OPPOSITE PAGE Jane Goodall in Gombe in the early 1960s
PHOTOGRAPHY CORBIS
Goodall’s love of animals was fostered from an early age. When she was five, she hid in a henhouse for hours, determined to find out how hens lay eggs, she tells her British Council audience. By the time she emerged, her family was frantic, but she wasn’t scolded. “My mother [Vanna] saw my shining eyes and sat down to hear the wonderful story of how a hen lays an egg,” she says. “If I’d had a different mother, all of that scientific curiosity and excitement could have been crushed.” At the age of 10, she discovered Tarzan. Like many young girls, she fell in love with the jungle hero. But that wasn’t enough for Londonborn Goodall, who harboured ambitions for her own African adventures. “This was my dream: I will grow up, go to Africa, live with animals and write books about them,” she recalls. Most people laughed at her. But not her mother, whose advice was: “If you really want something, you’re going to have to work really hard and take advantage of opportunity and never give up.” After finishing high school, Goodall did not have enough money to go to university. On the advice of her mother, she took up a secretarial job, on the chance that it might lead to a job in Africa. After a friend invited her to visit her family’s farm in Nairobi, Goodall, aged 23, arrived in Kenya after a three-week ship journey in 1957. She soon met Louis Leakey, who became internationally renowned for his work in paleontology and anthropology. “I went to him at the [Coryndon] Museum because somebody said, ‘Jane, if you’re interested in animals, you should meet Louis Leakey,’ ” Goodall says. Leakey showed her around, quizzing her. “I think he was really
herself stepping onto the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the thenBritish colony, Tanganyika (now Tanzania). To help convince the concerned British authorities at the time to allow Goodall to go, her mother agreed to accompany her, together with an African cook.
THE BIG BREAKTHROUGH
“THIS WAS MY DREAM: I WILL GROW UP, GO TO AFRICA, LIVE WITH ANIMALS AND WRITE BOOKS ABOUT THEM”
During Goodall’s first few months at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe Stream National Park), all of the chimps she saw fled whenever they saw her. She was discouraged. “I knew that if I didn’t see something exciting before the money ran out, that would be the end, and I would have let Leakey down,” she recalls. But one day, through her binoculars, she saw a chimp – who she later called David Greybeard, because of the colour of his whiskers – do something very interesting. “It was very obvious that he was picking these grasses, pushing them into holes, and picking something off with his lips,” Goodall says. That ‘something’ turned out to be termites, part of the animal’s omnivore diet. It was big news, Goodall says, because until then, humans were regarded uniquely by scientists as ‘man the toolmaker’. Goodall sent a telegram to Leakey, who responded, saying: “Now we must redefine ‘tool’, redefine ‘man,’ or accept chimpanzees as humans.” David Greybeard was the first of the chimps to lose their fear of Goodall. She was able to subsequently observe chimpanzees express emotions and exhibit a wide range of humanlike behaviours. “Looking back, over the now 55 years, I think the most striking thing is how like us they are,” Goodall says. “We didn’t know at the beginning how biologically
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After attending a conference in 1986 where she learnt that forests across Africa were rapidly vanishing, Goodall decided to leave her beloved Gombe. “I felt that I ought to try and do something to help the chimpanzees who had done so much for me,” she says. So she set off, on her own (her second husband, Derek Bryceson, who was the head of Tanzanian National Park, passed away from cancer in 1980), to different chimpanzee ranges across Africa, starting wildlife awareness weeks, talking at universities and to government leaders. She learnt about the broader problems faced by Africa’s people, coming to realise the links between deforestation and human need. “Africa is being exploited and the people are living in poverty,” she says. “We [JGI] have done a lot to improve the lives of the people, who, in turn, are
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A HOPEFUL FUTURE
COURTESY JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE / PHOTOGRAPHY CHRIS DICKINSON
AFRICA AND BEYOND
“I LOVE FORESTS. IT HURTS ME TO KNOW THAT RAINFORESTS ARE VANISHING”
helping chimpanzees, letting trees grow back, and understanding much more.” Goodall began Roots & Shoots, JGI’s youth-led community action group, after meeting with a dozen high school students in Tanzania in 1991. She says it now has around 150,000 groups in 138 countries. Why did she decide to focus her energies on working with young people? She doesn’t mince her words. “Because we’re destroying our planet, we’ve compromised their future,” she says. “And if they don’t have hope – well, we could go under. The goal is to create a critical mass of youth … If we can get that critical mass, they’ll be the next politicians, teachers, scientists, parents.” The potential picture of the future she paints is dire. “You certainly know how we’re losing our forest, creating deserts. And you know how species are moving towards extinction and many have gone,” she says. “I love forests. It hurts me to know that rainforests are vanishing.” Forests, she explains, are “the lungs of the world,” absorbing carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen. The other great ecosystem at peril that is helping to maintain equilibrium, Goodall says, is the ocean. “As more CO2 is released into the atmosphere, the ocean is trying to absorb more and more, and it becomes acidic,” she explains. “And when it becomes acidic, it can no longer absorb CO2.” In short, she says, “We’re harming the planet and all of this is leading to climate change.” She told her recent Hong Kong audience that she finds the air in the city alarmingly harmful. “You certainly know about air pollution here,” she said. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? When I came, it hurt my throat and it hurts my eyes.”
COURTESY JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE HONG KONG
similar they are,” she adds, referring to chimpanzee DNA, blood and immune systems. “We didn’t know the anatomy of the brain was almost identical; it’s just that ours is bigger,” she adds. “But nor did we know about these amazing similarities in behaviour … kissing, embracing, holding hands, patting one another, swaggering, shaking the fist. And they do these in the same sort of context as we do.” Together with her first husband, photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick, (with whom she had a son in 1967), she established the Gombe Stream Research Centre in 1965. Goodall obtained a PhD in ethology – the study of animal behaviour – from Cambridge in 1966, and started her conservation NGO, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), in 1977.
OPPOSITE PAGE Young members of Roots & Shoots participate in a group activity in Hong Kong. Jane Goodall chats with Rosana Ng, senior manager of Jane Goodall Institute Hong Kong, which was founded in 2002 and opened an office in the city in 2009. ABOVE Jane Goodall plants trees with members of Roots & Shoots in Singapore during a 2004 visit.
But Goodall also spreads messages of hope. “In this window of time, if we can get together, we can make change,” she says. Roots & Shoots tells young people that “every one of us makes a difference, every single day.” Its members, she says, “are changing the world; they are doing amazing projects.” In China, Roots & Shoots has grown to about 1,000 groups. Goodall says she is heartened by the “huge” change in attitudes to the environment she has witnessed there since she first visited in 1998. “We just had a 20th anniversary in mainland China,” she says. “They did a retrospective – which, I must say, made me cry, because it was so moving, you know.” Jane Goodall Institute Hong Kong (JGI HK) was set up in the city in 2009, says Rosana Ng, the group’s senior manager. Ng says
that the organisation, which relies on donations from the public and sometimes works with corporate sponsors, now has about 100 groups in the city. There’s no doubt that Goodall is an extraordinary public speaker, able to inspire people from all walks of life. At the British Council last November, she received a standing ovation. She told the Hong Kong audience that she also tries to talk to corporate leaders whenever she can. The last time
she spoke to the staff of an oil company, Goodall shares, at the end of it, “the CEO was unable to thank me for a bit, because he was moved.” He told her, “You’ve given us a lot to think about.” The next day, she adds, staff were scheduled to talk about the problems they faced because of the drop in oil prices. But instead, she was told, “ ‘Nobody would talk about anything but what you had said – and what we could do to make a difference.’ ”
“THE GOAL IS TO CREATE A CRITICAL MASS OF YOUTH … THEY’LL BE THE NEXT POLITICIANS, TEACHERS, SCIENTISTS, PARENTS”
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