Inspiring human: Jane Goodall

It’s never wise, I suppose, to hero-worship. But OH MY GOD ISN’T JANE GOODALL AMAZING?

I don’t want to carry on or anything, but we are lucky, lucky, lucky people to be still, in 2016, walking the same earth as this woman. This was a young woman, originally untrained in science, who changed the way we view animals — and ourselves. At the age of 82, she’s a field primatologist and activist and all round inspiration to thousands of kids (and adults) around the world.

In the summer of 1960, young Jane arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in what is now Tanzania, East Africa, on a mission to start a long-term study of chimpanzees.

She was employed by a famed anthropologist, who hoped that an intelligent mind, uncluttered by academia, might provide a fresh perspective on the primates.

But camping out in the jungle was such an unconventional activity for a young woman, the suits in Britain insisted she have a companion — so her Mum went with her.

Jane set up camp and surveyed the mountains and valley forest of the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve. At first, the chimps ran away whenever they saw her, but over time, they came to see her as a member — albeit a rather low-ranking one — of their group.

At the time, scientists believed humans were the only species to make and use tools — it was an important part of the definition of what it meant to be human. But Jane observed a chimp stripping leaves off twigs to fashion tools for fishing termites from a nest.

Proving that animals other than humans made and used tools was one of her most important discoveries.

She also observed chimps hunting and eating bushpigs and other animals, disproving the theories of the time that chimpanzees ate mostly plant foods and only occasionally ate insects and small rodents.

Some of the noise from the scientific community made it clear that she needed a science degree, so in 1961, she entered Cambridge University as a Ph.D. candidate, earning her Ph.D. in ethology in 1966.

Scientists of this era were allergic to the idea of ascribing emotions or even names to animals — they feared that this line of thinking would bias the results. “Dogs wag their tails in the course of social interaction to signal non-violence,” said science sternly. “Not because they’re ‘happy’.”

Ignoring this convention, Dr Goodall gave the Gombe chimps names instead of numbers, and reported that the animals had distinct personalities, minds and emotions. She observed complex, lasting chimpanzee family relationships, including a a three-year-old orphaned chimp who was adopted by a chimp who was not a close relative.

Her many books on the chimps drew such an enthusiastic audience that the chimps became minor celebrities in England. When one of the older female chimps died in 1972, the London Times printed an obituary for her.

In 1974 Jane made a rather unsettling discovery — but let’s really travel back in time first so you get the full context. This was a point in history where many people in the west — still reeling from the world wars and the cold war that followed — were pushing back against war-making. War, they believed, was an artificial human construct that we could overcome, with a concerted act of will. They sang songs like the one below (in close harmony, get it?)

But then Dr Jane Goodall, the long-haired, animal-loving, name-giving, champion of emotions in animals, discovered that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, engage in warfare, too.

She saw a brutal four year war play out at Gombe, with members of one group systematically murdering members of another. So there it was — the first evidence that war is wired into our DNA.

Dr. Goodall is often quoted as saying that she believed, until she made this discovery, that chimpanzees were “rather nicer” than human beings. But they, like us, she says, have a dark side to their nature. It’s up to us to decide which side dominates.

In this spirit, in 1977 she established the Jane Goodall Institute, a global conservation organisation that supports the ongoing research at the Gombe Stream Research Centre and is a world leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. The institute says it is widely recognized for establishing innovative conservation and development programs in Africa.

The Gombe Stream Research centre, which Dr. Goodall established in 1965, today hosts a team of researchers and field assistants, many of them Tanzanian.

In 1991, in response to the lack of hope that they saw among young people, Dr. Goodall and a group of Tanzanian students founded a conservation and humanitarian organisation called ‘Roots & Shoots’ to encourage children and young people to help create a more hopeful future. Today, Roots & Shoots groups are active in 134 countries, carrying out global and locally-based education and conservation projects.

Gilbert Gosvenor, chairman of The National Geographic Society, is quoted on the JGI website as saying that blazing a trail for other women primatologists is arguably Dr. Goodall’s greatest legacy. “During the last third of the 20th century, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, Cheryl Knott, Penny Patterson, and many more women have followed her. Indeed, women now dominate long-term primate behavioural studies worldwide.”

In 1986, after a conference session with startling news about deforestation and the rapidly dwindling chimpanzee populations across Africa, Dr. Goodall left Gombe to begin actively campaigning to save the chimps.

She continues this work today, traveling an average of 300 days per year to visit schoolchildren and speak in packed auditoriums about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that humankind will ultimately solve the problems it has imposed on the earth.

I saw her speak in Sydney in 2014, shortly after her 80th birthday. One of her birthday wishes was to see the Jane Goodall Institute raise enough funds to ensure completion of the island sanctuary sites at the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center (TCRC), a safe haven in the Republic of Congo, where orphaned chimps who government officials have confiscated from the black market get the care and attention they need.

The institute managed to raise the funds and all the rehabilitated chimpanzees at Tchimpounga are now being moved into these new, protected island sites where they run free through the forest sanctuary.

The talk included this lovely moment (you may want to get the tissues out).

If you’d like to learn more about Dr Goodall, support her work, get the kids involved, feel the love (and wish her a happy birthday yourself) go to: janegoodall.org; janegoodall.org.au and rootsandshoots.org

From: BigBlueMarble.TV