An ambassador for all species
The Weekly Telegraph 14/05/2002

Living with chimps in the Tanzanian jungle isn't every young woman's idea of fun. But for Jane Goodall, animals were always a driving passion.

At 18 months old her mother, Vanne, found her studying a handful of earthworms that were wriggling on her pillow. At four-and-a half, reported missing, the police found her in the hen coop where she had sat for four hours to watch an egg being laid.

'My mother understood my passion for animals before I did, and nurtured it,' says Jane in her calm, soft voice, that has a determined edge. 'She said: `If you want something, work hard and take opportunities and you will get there'.'

After leaving secondary school, Jane got a job at a documentary film studio and, by also working as a waitress, saved enough money to go to Kenya on holiday. It was there that she met the late Louis Leakey, curator of the Natural History Museum. To her delight he offered her the chance to study the behaviour of chimpanzees in Tanzania: 'I would have studied field mice,' she laughs.

Although 25 years old, the British authorities wouldn't hear of a woman going into the bush alone, so Vanne came to the rescue. Mother and daughter set off for the Gombe National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in July 1960, with enough money to last six months.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relative. But at the time, living only in Africa, people knew next to nothing about them, which gives an idea of how courageous this was. The British boatman who ferried them across later admitted he thought he'd never see them again.

Jane believes that women have a special relationship with animals. 'Women are more gentle and less dominant,' she says. 'At Gombe, the chimps ran away when they heard strange male voices, but women's voices are softer and therefore less threatening.'

Women scientists are also less fearful when talking about emotions. A breakthrough came after four months when Jane saw a chimp she named David Greybeard fishing out termites with an implement he had made - the beginning of tool making. It caused great waves of disbelief in scientific circles when this young untrained girl announced her findings.

'Chimps hug, kiss, play and pat each other on the back, just like us.' she explains. 'I knew animals had feelings, but science wouldn't have it.'

Having picked Jane because she was 'a mind untainted by academia', Louis realised she needed to get a degree and sent her to Cambridge. 'Forget a BA and do a PhD, he told me, so I did,' explains Jane modestly.

A living example of finding love wherever you are, Jane's first husband was Hugo van Lawick, a National Geographic photographer from The Netherlands who came to photograph the chimpanzees. The marriage sadly ended, but produced a child, still affectionately known as 'Grub'. Her second husband Derek Bryceson, Director of National Parks, proposed after they were almost killed together in a plane crash. Sadly, he died of cancer a few years later.

The President of Tanzania recently held a banquet, usually reserved for heads of state, in Jane's honour to celebrate 40 years of research at Gombe. Jane's groundbreaking scientific work has earned her a CBE from The Queen, the Order of the Golden Ark from Holland and the Kyoto Prize from Japan.

Forming the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977, for the past 15 years Jane has been an ambassador for all endangered species, campaigning against the commercialisation of bushmeat and creating employment and providing training in everything from environment to family planning for local African people.

'It's proven around the world that when you help women get better educated and gain self esteem, family size drops,' says Jane.

Brought up in a matriarchal household, Jane cites her mother as well as her childhood dog, Rusty, as her main inspirations. She learnt a lot about motherhood herself from the chimps who surrounded her at Gombe, where she brought up Grub until he was of school age.

A fable Vanne used to tell Jane and her sister Judy as children made a deep impression. The birds were having a competition to see who could fly the highest. The mighty eagle soared high above the others, but hiding in his feathers was a small Jenny Wren. When the eagle had soared as high as he could, she jumped out and flew the highest of all.

'How high would any of us rise by ourselves?' says Jane. 'We all need an eagle, and I see the people who have helped me as special feathers.'

Jane's 'Roots and Shoots' initiative - a global environmental and humanitarian project targeted for youth to improve their world - began 10 years ago in Tanzania.

Today there are over 4,000 projects in 51 countries. Groups undertake three projects focussing on: care and concern for the environment; care and concern for animals and strengthening your community.

Caltex, for instance, started a small school for local children in Congo-Brazzaville. As part of the Roots and Shoots project children from the International School visited.

'They had never interacted with local children before,' says Jane. 'They wrote things like `after a bit I found they were just like us' in their journals and drew pictures of black and white children holding hands - it was very moving.'

'Why not start a `Roots and Shoots' project in your International School?' suggests Jane, who believes expatriate children often miss out on important cultural experience by being separated from the community.

'I've noticed there is a huge reluctance in a lot of expatriate women to embrace something different,' says Jane with no apology. 'Most stay in their own circles and play bridge.'

She feels women should use the opportunity of being abroad to study the culture they're in and learn from it.

'Look around you and write letters back home,' she suggests. 'Not about what you're doing, but about what is going on in the community around you. Share the cultural experience - copy out stories from local papers or draw from your own journal,' she says. 'You'll regret it if you don't.'

The greatest shock Jane got was coming home, echoing many an expatriate experience. 'I couldn't bear the terrible waste, the greed,' she says. 'When you spend time with people who have nothing, it changes your values.'

An American woman whose husband was posted to Bombay felt she couldn't stay because of the stray dogs that littered the streets. Abandoned and full of mange, she couldn't bear to see them. When on leave she talked to a veterinary friend who told her a story about Jane. Looking out of the window in Tanzania, she had watched local boys dragging their dogs down to the ritual dip. One of the big boys in a group was teasing a young pup which was clearly ill and Jane went to talk to him. After that he went off carrying the puppy carefully.

The woman went back to Bombay, took in one stray dog and spayed it. She then got the expatriate community involved, at first asking them to take in dogs and then fundraising for a dog shelter. A vet offered his services and in her two years in Bombay she made a huge difference to the stray dog population and people continue her work now she has left.

'Sometimes the need seems overwhelming, but if you tackle one person, one dog or one child at a time, you don't know where it can lead,' says Jane.

'Cruelty to animals often comes through poverty or lack of understanding. It can sometimes be cultural - Muslims for instance, mustn't allow themselves to be licked by a dog - but you can help local children understand.'

Positively glowing with health at 67, Jane shows no signs of retiring. People often ask her where she gets her amazing energy and peaceful air, which encouraged her to write the autobiographical book Reason for Hope published last year.

'I try and live my life doing little things,' says Jane modestly. 'Of six billion people. I'm just one. I ask myself can I really make a difference? But so many people feel the same - think of how much power these people can have.'

There is a change afoot as we move into the 21st century believes Jane. Her hope is that 'Future generations will be born into a beautiful world with blue sky and, pray to God, some chimps will be swinging from the trees somewhere in Africa. But that depends on us,' says Jane, that determination creeping once again into her voice. 'We have to learn to take matters in our own hands.'

Jane now lives mainly in an aeroplane, travelling and lecturing 300 days a year on 'Roots and Shoots'. She's also co-authoring a code of conduct for relating to animals with a professor of animal behaviour in America.

'Every life has meaning,' says Jane. 'You can make a difference every day.'

Email info@janegoodall.org.uk to find out about becoming a member of the Jane Goodall Institute, to adopt an orphan chimp, to buy Jane's books and for information on how to get involved in 'Roots and Shoots'.

Publication: The Weekly Telegraph.