Jane Goodall takes on a broader mission
Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
SAN DIEGO -- The small room was dark and windowless, the lights dimmed. "Jane prefers low light," said one of her staff members.
Jane Goodall, 74, walked into the room, her hands still moist after a quick stop at the restroom (she doesn't use paper towels). The renowned primatologist who began her work with chimpanzees in Tanzania nearly 50 years ago is, these days, on a broader assignment. Over the last 22 years, Goodall has traveled tirelessly, staying no more than three weeks in one place as she tries to educate Earth's top primates about environmentalism, inspire hope and get them to save their planet.
Her newest book, tentatively titled "Hope for Animals and Our World," is about animals that have been rescued from the brink of extinction. It will be out in fall 2009.
Recently, I sat down with Goodall in this dark room on the University of San Diego campus to ask her about her landmark work with chimpanzees, which began nearly 50 years ago, and also some personal questions about herself.
Goodall positioned herself on a couch, wearing a reserved outfit of beige pants, a soft turquoise turtleneck and a multicolored shawl draped over her shoulders. Her clipped-back hair is now almost all white with small slivers of gray. She is a gracefully aged replica of herself in photos decades old, wandering the Tanzanian forests, blond hair tied back.
Is your work still centered around or focused on chimpanzees?
Not really. It's very, very important to me that we continue to study, that we do it in the right way, that there's enough money for it, that we try to protect those chimpanzees into the future by working with all the people living in poverty around the park and then hoping more and more of them will enable part of the land to regenerate so the chimps are no longer trapped as they are now; they're surrounded by cultivated fields. In five years, you get a 30-foot tree. So they're coming back, but you know, the villagers if they wanted could cut them down, there's nothing to stop them, except goodwill.
You talked a bit about poverty as one of the reasons for habitat destruction and the disappearing chimps. How do you deal with poverty as an issue?
