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Adopt an Acre® Today!
Go Deeper
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She’s fascinated by “the depths they can sink to and the heights to which they can soar.”
Jane Goodall is speaking not of chimpanzees but of the current object of her attention: human beings.
The transformation of the world’s most famous primatologist began in 1986. Goodall attended an environmental conference in Chicago that painted a blisteringly bleak picture of the future. “I came out a different person,” she recalls, adding that it was no longer an option to “sit in my beautiful forest.”
Goodall, therefore, decided to venture beyond Tanzania’s Gombe National Park—where she has been observing chimps since 1960—and take to the road with a save-the-planet message of peace and activism. Her lecture schedule is so rigorous that she hasn’t been in one place longer than three weeks in the past 20 years.
She established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in 1977 to support her research. But as growth and development nibbled away at the forests around the 20 square-mile Gombe park (and the chimp population in Africa was declining from more than 1 million to fewer than 200,000), her focus widened.
“When I realized how bad the problem was, I started TACARE,” says Goodall, referring to the Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education program, JGI’s first community-based conservation effort, “to improve the lives of people in a very holistic and environmentally sustainable way.”
While the chimpanzee studies continue in Gombe, the Jane Goodall Institute is busy preserving habitat across Africa, from Guinea to Uganda. There are projects to restore depleted farmland with quick-growing imported grains and to resurrect damaged watersheds. The institute works with local groups to improve health care and promote economic diversity.
In and around Gombe, TACARE’s involvement takes the form of tree plantings to revive the forest, environmental education programs for kids and microcredit loans for the poor.
There is, of course, always more to be done. That’s why Goodall has kicked off a new partnership with The Nature Conservancy, which likely will supply funds to extend TACARE’s reach. The Conservancy is using its Adopt-an-Acre program to raise a million dollars for the Jane Goodall Institute and several other Africa-based nonprofits.
“The Jane Goodall Institute has done a great job protecting the Gombe,” says Andrew Soles of the Conservancy’s Africa Program. “But the Gombe is really a little green island amid an increasing number of clear-cuts, and we aim to help them expand their protection efforts.”
Goodall, who is 72, says her approach nowadays is to reduce the pressure on forests and wildlife by alleviating social and economic strains on neighboring villagers. That requires communication: “I spend a lot of time talking and listening,” she says. “We can’t come in and dictate to them.”
The stakes are so high that teamwork is required on all levels, from the ground to the conference rooms. “Partnering is the only way to go,” adds Goodall. “We’ve made such a mess of the world.”
Yet she has her reasons to be optimistic. First, nature has proved to be remarkably resilient. Second, there’s the miracle of “this indomitable human spirit; people won’t give up.” —T.D.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Frank Trapper/Corbis (Jane Goodall); © Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures (Chimpanzee)
