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Dr. Jane Goodall is spending her days like most of the world right now: isolating at home. Despite usually traveling 300 days out of the year at the age of 86, Dr. Goodall is now becoming comfortable with being grounded at home – connecting with people online, preparing a “Jane” podcast, and continuing to spread her message of conservation to the world, including through a new documentary, Jane Goodall: The Hope.
The new documentary from National Geographic premieres today, on Earth Day and celebrates her legacy and 60 years of combined research and advocacy work with chimpanzees in Tanzania, along with how she spends her time now – outside of the forests. Dr. Goodall spoke with IGN about what has changed in her work over the past 60 years, our current global pandemic, and why she still has hope for future generations.
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Jane Goodall: From Scientist to Conservationist
Dr. Goodall is largely known for her studies on chimpanzees in the wild – specifically her research on chimpanzees' ability to create and use tools – which she began in 1960 at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her shift from chimpanzee research to wider conservation efforts came later, following a conference she helped put together at the Academy of Sciences in Chicago in 1986.
"When I began it was just me out there, but by '86, there were six other field sites. And at that meeting, it was mostly to talk about chimp behavior and how it differed from one environment to another," Dr. Goodall said. "But we had a session on conservation that was an absolute shock. Everywhere in Africa where people were, the forests were going, the chimp numbers were decreasing, and the bushmeat situation was opening up, and foreign logging companies were destroying forests and building roads and mining for gas, oil, and minerals, and with human populations growing, it was a grim picture."
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Photo credit: National Geographic Creative/ Hugo van Lawick[/caption]
"So I went to that conference and had my Ph.D. by then, and I was, you know, thinking I could go to Gombe and study the chimps forever. And I left as an advocate. I didn't make the decision. It was just something that happened.”
Focusing on her advocacy work over the past four decades, Dr. Goodall no longer spends her time studying chimps in the wild, as she says her job now is to help others see the importance of environmental and wildlife conservation.
"I’ve been going back twice a year for short visits (to Tanzania) and I will resume doing that. But it won’t be a longer one, because I know that’s not my job anymore,” Dr. Goodall explained. “What I’m doing now is my job, trying to wake people up to the fact that if we go on putting economic development over protecting the environment, that’s destroying humans’ future. We will become extinct if the globe continues heating up."
Jane on Working With the ‘Bad Guys’
In the documentary, Dr. Goodall explains why she made the controversial decision to work with the oil company, Conoco, in the late '80s to get a sanctuary built for chimpanzees in the Republic of the Congo. She was told it would "contaminate her image," but she didn't let that affect her decision.
“I started thinking about it very carefully when Conoco wanted to help. And I thought: I fly out on planes, I drive around in cars, I use electricity. And if I say I refuse to take money from a company that – at that time Conoco was way, way, way, greener than any other oil company, which is why in the end they let DuPont buy them because they couldn’t survive,” Dr. Goodall told IGN. “But, you know, if you work with a company that’s really putting a lot of money into alternative energy and posing the least harm to the environment, then how hypocritical to use their products, pay them money, but not let them pay any money to you. Because a few people will say, 'How dare you take money from them, you’re condoning their practices.' But we're not; we're helping them to get greener, quicker."
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The Global Pandemic and Our Planet
With COVID-19 affecting the globe, including in less pollution as more countries have adopted shelter-in-place rules, Dr. Goodall hopes the awareness for wildlife and the planet will last but thinks more people may realize the negative outcome of humans coming in too close of contact with animals in certain situations.
"I fear that when the restrictions are lifted, it’ll be business as usual, plus to make up for lost time," Dr. Goodall said. "We see the result of less pollution, wildlife is coming into city centers because it’s deserted, but I’d love to think it could last. It will wake some more people up. They might fight harder to reduce emissions and reduce pollution.
"But I think the real silver lining is more people will be understanding and will have to realize this pandemic is our fault, it’s been predicted, and it’s because we’re destroying the environment. Animals and people are getting in closer contacts, and factory farms and the meat market in China and Africa are really creating the conditions for viruses to jump from an animal to us. We’ve had these zoonosis' before, with SARS, and MERS, and Swine Flu and all these other things. But we’re not learning from it and maybe this time we will,” Dr. Goodall said.
The Jane Goodall Institute, a non-profit founded in 1977 by Dr. Goodall, has programs in Africa looking after chimpanzees, in which, Dr. Goodall said she hopes they will have enough resources to keep the chimps protected from COVID-19, as they are able to contract the disease.
"We have got to desperately try and protect the chimps in Gombe, these famous chimps we’ve been studying for 60 years. And to do that, we have to get protective masks – and the staff in Gombe is being reduced to just two."
Jane Goodall: The Hope, 60 Years Later
Dr. Goodall never imagined her life would take her where it has but says she's proud of the work that has been accomplished over the past decades by so many people. The Jane Goodall Institute has programs to expand conservation efforts globally, including the Roots & Shoots organization that began in 1991 and is now in 65 countries, which encourages youth from kindergarten to university levels to work on projects involving people, animals, and the environment.
"It makes me feel very proud of all the amazing people who have been doing the research all these years," Dr. Goodall said. "The wonderful Tanzanian field staff, the students, the fact that we’ve expanded to include 104 villages around Gombe national park, including their lives in the way they wanted.”
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Photo Credit: National Geographic/Bill Wallauer[/caption]
"And growing Roots & Shoots around the world. Hundreds of thousands of young people have gone through that program, and they retain the values, I think because we don't tell them what to do, we just say you have to choose three projects – roll up your sleeves and get out there and take action. So they’re empowered."
It's programs like these that keep giving Dr. Goodall hope. "Everywhere I go, there are these groups of young people from kindergarten to university, and they are so excited to tell me what they’ve been doing to make the world better," Dr. Goodall said.
"For the rest of my life, I’ll go on growing Roots & Shoots, fighting for better conditions for chimps and other creatures in research. Trying to make this a better world."
Jane Goodall: The Hope premieres on April 22 on National Geographic channel. The film picks up following the 2017 documentary, Jane, which focused primarily on found footage from the National Geographic archives that was thought to be lost, of Goodall and her then photographer/filmmaker, and later husband, Hugo Van Lawick and their time in Gombe as she studied chimp behavior in the wild.
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Jessie Wade is Homepage Editor at IGN and the science-environment-wildlife lady. Follow her on twitter @jessieannwade for science, games, and movie goodness.
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