We Are Trashing the Planet - Jane Goodall And, you know, whats our biggest difference? This development of our intellect. So, how come the most intellectual creature to ever walk the planet is destroying its only home? I mean, the reason I travel around the world is because were trashing the planet. And I dont think theres a very big window of time, and in that window of time its important to change peoples attitudes and particularly to give them hope, because many people who care about the future, they feel helpless and hopeless when they look at, you know, whats happening with the destruction of the forest, the pollution of the rivers and the ocean, the reckless burning of fossil fuels, the greenhouse gases, the climate change, you know, poverty and discrimination and war. I mean, its terrible... And so how come were destroying our planet when were intelligent enough to send a rocket to Mars with a little robot coming out and taking photos? It doesnt make sense. So weve lost wisdom. Wisdom was making a decision based on, How will this affect our people generations ahead? Now people dont seem to care about generations of the future. Its all now. Its all about making money. Struggling to live if youre very poor, taking far more than you need if youre not very poor, and making money - the bottom line at the next shareholders meeting, the next political campaign, me, now and... JENNIFER BYRNE: Its a lot to reverse. JANE GOODALL: Yes, so theres an awful lot we need to change in the way people behave and the way people think about how they live, and thats why Im spending so much time with young people - with the youth, with our Jane Goodalls Roots & Shoots program for young people of all ages thats now in 136 countries. ********************************************************************* FULL TRANSCRIPT JENNIFER BYRNE: Hi, Im Jennifer Byrne, and thanks for joining me for this first of our special interviews with some of the elders of our tribe - people who have lived long, achieved much and are still firing and inspiring. And tonight, our guest is the remarkable Jane Goodall, who grew up with a dream of going to Africa and working with animals and became a legend in the field - first for her work with chimpanzees, changing the very way we humans looked at ourselves, and later as an activist for all life on Earth - a writer, a scientist, a messenger of hope. Now 80, and officially Dame Jane Goodall, she is still out there campaigning some 300 days a year, talking to everyone from presidents to schoolchildren, and tonight were going to hear from her ourselves. Jane, thank you so much. Lovely to see you. JANE GOODALL: Lovely to see you too. JENNIFER BYRNE: Lets start with books, because it was the books you read as a child which inspired you and really set you on your lifes course. They were... JANE GOODALL: Well, first of all it was Doctor Dolittle. You know, I so much wanted to learn myself how to talk to animals. And I used to pretend to all my friends that I could understand what the squirrels and the cats were saying. They believed me - I would translate it. And then when I was ten, it was Tarzan Of The Apes. I found this little book in a second-hand bookshop and I read it from cover to cover and fell madly in love with Tarzan. And what did he go and do? He married the wrong Jane. JENNIFER BYRNE: (Laughs) The wrong Jane... What was it that these books set off in your mind? And were here at this beautiful State Library. Were surrounded by books. Why those ones? JANE GOODALL: Well, it was always animals - long before Doctor Dolittle. I just was born loving animals, apparently. You know, Id watch worms and birds and anything I could. We had a dog... And books because, well, there was no TV back then when I was growing up, and books were the window to the outside world, and I read and read and read. JENNIFER BYRNE: You mentioned a dog. JANE GOODALL: Rusty came into my life when I was about 12. And he wasnt even our dog - he lived in a hotel around the corner. And I was trying to train this other very beautiful pedigree sheepdog how to... just simple shake hands, and he just... he was unusually dumb for a sheepdog. And then one day this little black paw came out, and it was Rusty, and I thought, This is an unbelievable... I wasnt teaching him, I wasnt rewarding him, I wasnt speaking to him, but he got it. So after that he became my constant companion. JENNIFER BYRNE: This dream of Africa, of working with animals, you grew up... well, you were born in London, but you grew up in the seaside town of Bournemouth. You werent rich. JANE GOODALL: No, we were poor. JENNIFER BYRNE: You were poor. It must have seemed a most unlikely dream. JANE GOODALL: Everybody laughed at me and told me to dream about something I could achieve. And it was my mother, and she would say, perhaps not in these words, but the message was, If you really want something youre going to have to work hard and take advantage of opportunity and never give up. JENNIFER BYRNE: In fact, you did the traditional thing that a girl of the, you know, 40s, 50s - you went and got a secretarial... diploma. JANE GOODALL: Yes, because we couldnt afford university. I kept dreaming. It was... You know, I knew that wasnt my life. And my mother did too, but she suggested, she said, If you do a secretarial course, you may get a job in Africa. And thats how it began. JENNIFER BYRNE: So, OK, youre 23, you leave Bournemouth, you save up all your money... JANE GOODALL: Mm-hmm. JENNIFER BYRNE: ..work as a waitress, get on a boat, and you are sailing to Mombasa, to Kenya. JANE GOODALL: Yep. JENNIFER BYRNE: Did you know this is the start, this is it? JANE GOODALL: I dont think I thought of it in those terms. You know, at 23 it was just the adventure itself, and I didnt really know what I was going to... I mean, OK, I was going to stay with my friend, which I did, but in our family it was always drilled - Dont overstay your welcome. Dont sponge on your friends. So I actually had a job lined up in Nairobi even before I went, because my uncle was a surgeon and one of his patients came from Nairobi. It was another boring job, a secretarial, but at least, you know, I could pay my own way. JENNIFER BYRNE: So you start this boring job in Nairobi and, extraordinary quirk of fate - I think its fate - you, within a month, meet the man who was then the most famous anthropologist in the world, really, Louis Leakey. And he takes a shine to you. JANE GOODALL: (Chuckles) Well, I heard about him because somebody said, Jane, if youre interested in animals, you should really meet Louis. And he was the curator of the Natural History Museum in Nairobi. And so I went to see him, I made an appointment, and I remember him taking me all around and asking me all these questions. And, you see, Id been learning and reading about Africa and animals all the time, and Id spent hours in the Natural History Museum in London, so I could answer many of his questions, and I often knew enough to pretend that I knew even when I didnt. Anyway, I left with a job. I didnt go to get a job. But I left with a job as his secretary. JENNIFER BYRNE: Leakey was the man. He was The Man. He was working on the earliest fossils of humans, in Olduvai Gorge, on the Serengeti Plain - these beautiful, evocative names - and he invited you. JANE GOODALL: Yes, I could go with this one other young English girl, and he and his wife, providing his wife liked me - this was a big, a big... You know, and I was so nervous going to meet her for the first time. But anyway, fortunately it worked out. JENNIFER BYRNE: What then happened, Jane, to take you from being the secretary to Louis Leakey to all of a sudden being sent out into the middle of the wilds? JANE GOODALL: He decided I was the person hed been looking for for years to go and learn about chimpanzees. And I think the day he decided and talked to me about it was when Gillian and I met this young male lion. And cause we were allowed to go walking on the plains... JENNIFER BYRNE: I love the way, casually, Oh, we just met this male lion. JANE GOODALL: Well, we did and he followed us, you know, about twice the length of this beautiful library room, and it was a bit scary, but it was really exciting, and I apparently reacted exactly... I did exactly what I should have done. JENNIFER BYRNE: Which was, just for us in case we see a lion? JANE GOODALL: In case you meet a lion? Well, we were down in the bottom of the gorge, Gillian and I, and looked around and there was this lion standing there. So Gillian said, Oh, we must go down into the thicket, thick part. And I said, No, we must climb up, because hell see us in the thick part, but we wont see him. So we climbed up in his full vision up onto the open plains, and he followed kind of halfway and then... He was curious. Hed not seen two white ladies before. JENNIFER BYRNE: So, apart from your success with the lion, was there anything else that made you and Louis Leakey think you were right? What was your qualification for this? JANE GOODALL: I think my qualification was this long, passionate interest in animals, the fact that Id learned so much, and the fact I was totally at home out in the bush, completely. And loved it. And, you know, thats what I wanted. And he thought, Well, Jane will be able to survive being alone in the bush. But, of course, in the end, the authorities wouldnt let me go alone, and I had to have a companion - thats when my mother volunteered. JENNIFER BYRNE: You whistled for your mother. JANE GOODALL: Yes. JENNIFER BYRNE: And she came! JANE GOODALL: Four months, she came. The first day wed driven with the botanist from the museum in Nairobi, and it was a very long... It took about three days camping on the way. Poor Mum. And we got into Kigoma, and it was the very time that the Belgian Congo erupted, and it was two weeks before they would allow me to go up and start the work with chimps. And then when we finally were going in a boat along the lake, you know, I remember looking up at the hills, the mountains, the thick forest and valleys and thinking, How on earth am I ever going to be able to find these chimpanzees? JENNIFER BYRNE: And it did take a while, didnt it, to actually locate them? JANE GOODALL: Well, I found them, but they ran away. As soon as they saw me, they ran away. See, a valley is like this, so Louis chose it carefully. Although hed never been there, hed heard about it. And so from a ridge, you could look down across the valley, and with my binoculars, which werent very good, but I could see them in the distance. Every time I got anywhere near them they ran away. It was one chimpanzee whom I named David Greybeard with this white, very white frill of hair on his chin. A very gentle chimpanzee, and we dont know why he began to lose his fear, but he did. And so, one day when I got back in the evening, the cook, Tanzanian cook, said that... So it must have been about month five, because my mother had just left. And he said this male chimpanzee had been... Hed climbed a palm tree to eat palm nuts, and he did the same the next day, so then I thought, Well, Im gonna stay down. And lo and behold, it was this David Greybeard that Id noticed out in the forest. JENNIFER BYRNE: And what was the... what made the connection? When did it go from a distant, wary observation to a connection? JANE GOODALL: Well, David coming into camp and finding bananas and, um, stealing them. So then I thought, Well, this is great, and put bananas out. And gradually David brought his friends - he was a leader. Not the top-ranking, but he was a leader - they trusted him. And so gradually more and more chimpanzees came to the camp, and I got to know them up close, and then, of course, I could find them out in the forest. It was a magic time in my life. I mean, how lucky can you be to be with the most fascinating of creatures - to be the first one to be anywhere near them and get to know them? So, you know, every day I saw something that was completely new. And also it was magical getting to know Flo and watching the development of infant Flint and beginning to understand all these postures and gestures. And not having been to college, I didnt realise that its very unscientific to have an emotional bond with your subject, and its very unscientific to imagine you have empathy. But, you know, intuitively, when you see two chimpanzees kissing, you think, Oh, you know, they must like each other. And thats where Rusty came in so wonderfully when I went to Cambridge and I was told... JENNIFER BYRNE: Is Rusty your dog? JANE GOODALL: Yes, Rusty the dog. They told me, the professors... You know, I was a bit scared of them. And Louis said I had to get a degree - no time for a BA, I had to get a PhD. And to get there and be told Id done everything wrong - chimps should have had numbers, not names. I couldnt talk about their personalities, their minds capable of solving problems, and I couldnt talk about their emotions, because, I was told, those were unique to us. But my dog had already taught me that that wasnt true. So I could stand up for, you know, my conviction. JENNIFER BYRNE: You were still, what, late 20s, early 30s by now. How galling was it to be treated as some kind of ignorant, emotional amateur? JANE GOODALL: No, it didnt feel like that at all, because, you know, I respected these people. Id not been to college. It wasnt... I didnt feel that I was being disrespected. I just thought, Well, maybe Ill never get this degree. I just didnt want to let Louis Leakey down. At the same time, I wasnt prepared to compromise my values. JENNIFER BYRNE: Youre not accusing them of disrespect, but you are saying they were wrong? JANE GOODALL: They were totally wrong - completely wrong. I knew they were wrong. But I think they didnt really believe what they were saying. But I think they didnt have the scientific tools to try and study things like personality and emotion, and they were trying desperately at that time to make ethology into a hard science. And, of course, it cant be. JENNIFER BYRNE: Why? JANE GOODALL: Because you have to allow empathy and intuition to come in. And if youre studying a creature that is more like us than any other, with whom we share 98-plus per cent of our DNA, then if you dont use those tools, those intuitive ways of understanding another, you miss out. In fact, I dont know how you would ever understand anything - I wouldnt. JENNIFER BYRNE: It was David Greybeard, who you mentioned earlier, who was very vital, central, to your first huge discovery, which was made quite soon after you reached Gombe - which was that chimpanzees use tools. Why did this matter so much? How did you find out? JANE GOODALL: At that time it was thought that humans and only humans used and made tools. In fact, we were defined as man the tool-maker. And so when, on this never-to-be-forgotten day, I saw - and again it was David Greybeard - just happened to be David Greybeard, and he wasnt that close. I was looking through binoculars, and I saw this black hand reach out and pick a grass stem and push it down into the termite mound, and pull it out with termites biting on and eat them off. I think it was the next day, but he picked a leafy twig and stripped off the leaves - thats the making part of it. And so, you know, I mean, I wasnt really surprised, because Id read books about chimps in captivity, and they clearly were very smart. But in the wild, well, it was going to be different. Because in captivity, Oh, surely theyve learned these things by some... It rubbed off from these wonderful humans, which wasnt true. JENNIFER BYRNE: Thats right, and I dont want to overstate it, but it was a bit like an intellectual bomb going off in the scientific establishment. JANE GOODALL: Yes, it was breaking down one of the barriers that was supposed to separate us, in our arrogance, from all the other animals. And so there was huge resistance. People said I must have taught them. Now that would have been... No way I could have taught them how to do it. And then, Well, shes just a girl. She doesnt have a degree. That was said. But luckily, we got these terrific photographs. It was my sister who came out, because they wanted to send a photographer, and I said, Well, the chimps are used to me - theyll run away from anybody, but Judy sounds like me and looks a bit like me. So, she got those very first photos of tool-using, and thats when National Geographic came in. JENNIFER BYRNE: And thats when it all really went huge for you, didnt it? JANE GOODALL: Yes. Yes. Thats when money came in. At first it was money for six months, and that was a big worry, but then Geographic, actually, they funded the research for the next seven years. JENNIFER BYRNE: You studied the social family framework of the chimps. You studied the mothering techniques. In fact, you got pregnant when you were in the jungle, with... to your... a photographer, I believe. JANE GOODALL: Yes. The National Geographic sent Hugo van Lawick. Louis Leakey picked him. He actually thought he would make a good husband for me. JENNIFER BYRNE: What techniques did you adapt, or adopt, from the chimpanzees, that was useful in bringing up your own child? JANE GOODALL: Well, I realised, first of all, that there were good and bad chimp mothers, and the good mothers were protective but not overprotective. They were affectionate, they were playful and above all they were supportive. And when I was watching them I thought, Well, they have such fun with their babies - Im going to have fun with mine. Im going to play with my child just like they do and enjoy him when hes a baby, and so I did. JENNIFER BYRNE: So the chimpanzees actually made you a better mother? JANE GOODALL: I think they made me a better mother, but, you know, I was raised pretty well too and I have the same... Cause the key thing was support. If a chimp mother supports the child. If shes a low-ranking female, she may get beaten up by a high-ranking female if theres a squabble between the two infants. But the low-ranking mother, if shes a good mother, will run in to support her child anyway, even if she gets beaten up. JENNIFER BYRNE: You were there for decades. How did you think of the chimpanzees? I mean, is it wrong to say they were your friends? JANE GOODALL: Do you know, Ive struggled with how how to describe that relationship. It wasnt like friends. It wasnt like family. It was total trust and respect for beings who were so like us and yet in a different world. And I dont think we have a word for that sort of relationship. JENNIFER BYRNE: It just was. JANE GOODALL: It just was trust and mutual respect. Trust both ways. JENNIFER BYRNE: You were the first, but Louis Leakey was an extraordinary man. He chose you, first of all, but there were three of you. You became known if... None of them were great titles - the Trimates was one... JANE GOODALL: The Trimates, Leakeys Angels or Leakeys Girls. JENNIFER BYRNE: Leakeys Girls, yes. That dates it, doesnt it? So, theres Dian Fossey, who was sent to Rwanda to study the gorillas. JANE GOODALL: Yeah. JENNIFER BYRNE: There was Birute Galdikas... JANE GOODALL: Galdikas, yes. JENNIFER BYRNE: ..who was sent to Borneo with the orangutans. JANE GOODALL: You know, both Dian and Birute approached him wanting, she to study gorillas and Birute to study orangutans. He found me... They found him because of me. Because they knew that hed supported me, they thought he might support them. And, of course, he wanted information on the other great apes. JENNIFER BYRNE: Because that, he thought, would tell him more about early humans. JANE GOODALL: Yeah, he thought that if I saw behaviour that was the same as or similar to ours, in the chimps today, that that behaviour might have also been present in a common ancestor and therefore would have come up with humans who are evolutionary pathway, and he could then imagine his, you know, the early man kissing, embracing, holding hands, the relationship between mother and child. JENNIFER BYRNE: So he must have been wildly excited when he discovered the toolmaking with David Greybeard. JANE GOODALL: Oh, he was - he sent this telegram saying, Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans. JENNIFER BYRNE: You went in 1960 and, around the mid-80s, so 25 years later, you came in from the green, so to speak, and you moved on from being a hands-on, eyes-on observer to become an activist - why did you decide to do that? JANE GOODALL: I dont think I did decide. I dont remember deciding. But I went to a conference in 1986, and it was in Chicago and we had a session on conservation, and it was a complete shock. I mean, I knew there was deforestation going on around Gombe, but to see that it was right across Africa, where the chimps range is, to see chimpanzee numbers - every study site reported decreasing numbers. It was the beginning of the bushmeat trade. And we also had a session on conditions in some captive situations. And I cant forget the secretly filmed footage in one of the medical research labs in the US. And it was a complete shock - heres our closest living relatives put into solitary confinement in 5ft by 5ft cells - their crime, being like us. And scientists prepared to admit all the physiological similarities, but absolutely still not the intellectual ones or the emotional ones. And so I left as an activist. JENNIFER BYRNE: And could you, having observed them so closely, you could recognise their distress? JANE GOODALL: Oh, absolutely. They were not normal. And, you know, I always say it was my Damascus moment, like St Paul on the road to Damascus, because Im not conscious of any decision. I went in as a scientist... and then I just left as an activist. JENNIFER BYRNE: While you were in Gombe, in fact, you wrote your first big-seller, your bestseller, In The Shadow Of Man. And it was really interesting to see in the intro, in a recent edition, here is Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great scientists of his time, and what he says is, Your work with chimpanzees represents one of the western worlds great scientific achievements. Not bad for a secretary from Bournemouth. How important was that - to have the recognition of someone like Stephen Jay Gould? JANE GOODALL: Well, it was just, you know, one more... Because by the time he wrote that, most scientists were sort of really going along with the fact that, yes, chimpanzees were behaving very much like us, and there were the beginnings of studies of personality and emotion. But I was extremely gratified when Steve wrote that. I really was - it was quite something. JENNIFER BYRNE: Youve written, what, 20, 25 books? Is that a particular joy for you? Is that part of what you love? JANE GOODALL: Oh yeah, cause remember, when I was a child, the dream was, Go to Africa, live with wild animals and write books about them. So I always loved writing. JENNIFER BYRNE: Oh, you didnt mention that. The third one... JANE GOODALL: Didnt I? Yes, yes. That was part of the dream. I always loved writing. JENNIFER BYRNE: You also wrote kids books, and you had a whole series of childrens animal family books, and it struck me that we grow up, like you, reading books in which animals talk, that we feel for them, we empathise with them, and animals have characters, and then its almost like we have to grow up and not think of animals that way. What happens? JANE GOODALL: Well, you know, theres a point in the fact that animals dont talk and feel exactly like us, cause they dont. Theyre all their own... Its like, you know, my feeling for the chimps - theyre very like us, but theyre themselves, and I dont think they would talk the way we do if they had words. I think theyd probably find different ways to say things. I dont know, but all that were learning about animal communication and animal intelligence... And its really exciting, and thats the kind of information I want to put as it is, but for children. JENNIFER BYRNE: Mm. JANE GOODALL: So, to take whats real and whats known - which is so exciting, in and of itself - and put it for children in a way thats exciting for them to read. I dont make the animals talk, but I explain what theyre doing and why theyre doing it. JENNIFER BYRNE: I want to show a bit of footage now, which is of... with Wounda - Wounda, a chimpanzee found close to death, as the name means in Congolese - and we see you... talking to her, and theres this extraordinary moment in that period of her release into the wild when she hugs you. Did you know Wounda? JANE GOODALL: Didnt - met her that day for the first time. And what was so extraordinary is that Rebeca was there, Rebeca the veterinarian, our sanctuary manager, and Rebeca was the one who saved her life. Rebeca was the one she knew, and she briefly greets Rebeca, and theres that extraordinary embrace, which is not... I mean, chimps dont normally embrace like that for so long - its just a quick embrace. And she just went on and on hugging me. We were all in tears. JENNIFER BYRNE: You grew up dreaming about Africa, and now youre 80, and you spend much of your life surrounded by humans. (Chuckles) Does this seem rather ironic to you? JANE GOODALL: Well, were animals too, and we are pretty fascinating, and Im endlessly intrigued by why people do what they do. And, you know, whats our biggest difference? This development of our intellect. So, how come the most intellectual creature to ever walk the planet is destroying its only home? I mean, the reason I travel around the world is because were trashing the planet. And I dont think theres a very big window of time, and in that window of time its important to change peoples attitudes and particularly to give them hope, because many people who care about the future, they feel helpless and hopeless when they look at, you know, whats happening with the destruction of the forest, the pollution of the rivers and the ocean, the reckless burning of fossil fuels, the greenhouse gases, the climate change, you know, poverty and discrimination and war. I mean, its terrible... And so how come were destroying our planet when were intelligent enough to send a rocket to Mars with a little robot coming out and taking photos? It doesnt make sense. So weve lost wisdom. Wisdom was making a decision based on, How will this affect our people generations ahead? Now people dont seem to care about generations of the future. Its all now. Its all about making money. Struggling to live if youre very poor, taking far more than you need if youre not very poor, and making money - the bottom line at the next shareholders meeting, the next political campaign, me, now and... JENNIFER BYRNE: Its a lot to reverse. JANE GOODALL: Yes, so theres an awful lot we need to change in the way people behave and the way people think about how they live, and thats why Im spending so much time with young people - with the youth, with our Jane Goodalls Roots & Shoots program for young people of all ages thats now in 136 countries. JENNIFER BYRNE: And change is possible? JANE GOODALL: Well, everywhere I go, there are young people with shining eyes wanting to tell Dr Jane what theyre doing to make this a better world, filled with enthusiasm, dedication, passion, and its their future. JENNIFER BYRNE: Well, Jane, you said that chimpanzees dont say goodbye. So, Ill just say a huge thankyou. Its been wonderful to share this time with you. And that is our program for tonight. Please join me next week as we continue this journey into the minds of great writers and thinkers - the elders of our tribe. Until then, happy reading, thanks for your company and a warm goodnight.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 06:46:09 +0000
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