Jane Goodall on her hope for the future

This is how you could imagine Jane Goodall To be: the correspondent Seth Doane and her camera team had just met and settle in her childhood house in Bournemouth, England, but the famous naturalist was more concentrated on a visit to a Robin and a bee.

She first learned the bees – and, yes, the birds – here. “You grew up looking at this garden dreaming of another world?” asked Doane.

“Yeah, I did it.”

And she found it in the Tanzanie tropical forest of Gombe, where her revolutionary work studying the chimpanzees in the 1960s made her a national “coverage”. At 87, she can still be found on the front of magazines and lead a conservation empire. His Jane Goodall Institute, dedicated to the protection of wildlife and the environment, has chapters in two dozen countries; And there is Roots & Shots, a program to start young people from around the world.

Goodall’s Own The fascination for animals started when she was a child, spending hours in a tree with library books: “I read Tarzan up there,” she said. “There was no television at the time. It was then that my dream started. I will go to Africa, live with animals, write books about them. It was everything. No intention to be a scientist, because girls did not do this kind of thing.”

She started as secretary, then won a job as assistant to the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. He was looking for a “pair of fresh and ardent spirit”: “I was clearly passionate,” said Goodall. “I had clearly an understanding of animals. And he thought that women could be better in the field, that we could be more patient. In addition, he wanted someone who had not gone to university, so he wanted a impartial spirit.”

Leakey collected funds for Goodall to spend six months in the jungle studying chimpanzees in Tanzania. It was little known about them at the time. Goodall filled with newspaper batteries with notes.

“I have transcribed them every night,” she said.

“WOW, look at this, ’37, 38, 39, 40 …” Every minute, you have the behavior of an animal. “”

“Yes, and stenography, as ‘F’ would be” feed. “”

Above all, she witnessed chimpanzees to shape and use tools – something raw, until then, was unique to humans.

Doane asked, “Did you realize that what you saw was so extraordinary?”

“I knew it was going to have a huge impact,” said Goodall. “In fact, many people refused to believe it. Why should they believe this young girl? She hadn’t even been to university!”

But the publishers of National Geographic were intrigued. “They sent a photographer, the cameraman Hugo Van Lawick, and when his film started to make the rounds, showing the chimpanzees using small twigs to fish for the termites, they had to believe.”

“There was a National Geographic directive not only to focus on the chimpanzees, but for Hugo to focus on you,” asked Doane. “Did that disturb you?”

“Well, it was frustrating,” she replied, “but, you know, ‘Oh Jane, you know, I want you to wash your hair-oh, could you wash it again? I couldn’t get the right light …'”

In an article in August 1963, National Geographic legend a photo, “in a wild boudoir, Miss Goodall Lathers her blond hair with water pure enough to drink.” Goodall said: “It put me under the spotlight that I did not want. But then there was all this press on:” Oh, she has only money from geography because she has beautiful legs and things. “”

“Have you felt objectified?” asked Doane.

“It was just a different world. And so, well, if it is my legs, really, who helped me get money to study the chimpanzees, thank you, the legs!” She laughed.

This photographer became her husband and they had a son together. And in her study of several decades, these chimpanzees have also become much more for her. She showed Doane portraits of some of the chimpanzees: Ollie, Flo with Little Flint, and “Grumpy Old JB”

“It’s almost as if you show me family photos,” said Doane.

“Yeah. I know.”

Chimpanzees share 99% of humans DNA. The difference, underlines Goodall, is the development of our intellect. “Which makes it absurd that this most intellectual of all the creatures on the planet destroys his only house,” she noted.

“Is that your mission now?”

“Yes. The effects of climate change, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, fires. So, the important thing is to give people the hope that we can pass, because if you have no hope, why bother you?”

She wrote a new book on hope and calls it “a survival guide for difficult times”. This is part of his breed to reach as many people as possible.

“This planet, it has no infinite natural resources; they are over. They can end.

So what will happen if we continue with business as usual? “”

Pre-Pandemic, said Goodall, she was on the road 300 days a year. Now she gives conferences and holds meetings of her room in the attic – “Virtual Jane”, as her name is.

Doane asked, “Do you want to be so busy?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Why are you doing it?”

“Because there is a message to get out,” said Goodall, “and I get older, and there is less time in front of me, and the world falls into pieces.”

“Do you feel this emergency?” asked Doane.

“Yes I do it.”

This means a lot of discussions; Whiskey, she said, soothes her vocal cords. A daily walk does almost everything else. “I don’t want to turn into a sofa potato,” she said. “You can’t sit all day long. It’s ridiculous.”

“I can’t imagine that you’ve never sitting all day,” suggested Doane.

“Um, not really, no.”

Here, along the English channel, it is again clear that it is attracted to the natural world. But protecting this means moving your attention: “So now I have to talk to bankers, lawyers and CEOs and politicians.”

“What do you say?”

“I tell them stories and try to reach their hearts. People have to change from the inside.”

And this change, said Goodall, can start little: “Everyone can do something. I mean, when you do shopping, you may wonder: ‘HMM, did this product harm the environment when it was done? Was it cruel to animals? Is it cheap? For what Is it cheap? Is it inexpensive because of unjust wages? “”

Doane said, “You ask people to do a lot.”

“Well, why not? If they care about the future, especially if they have children, you don’t have everything. You know, even if you just choose one thing, like eating less meat. something. “”

Read an extract: “The Book of Hope: a survival guide for difficult times”

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History produced by Mikaela Bufano. Publisher: Brian Robbins.