Jane Goodall: ‘My research wouldn’t be proper science, but I didn’t mind. As long as I could work with chimps.’ Photo: Jane Goodall Institute
Fifty years after she began her chimpanzee research, primatologist Jane Goodall is travelling the world with an important message. ‘We must make green again the places we have destroyed.’
(This interview was published on 27 November 2010 in Bionieuws and is being republished here as a tribute. Jane Goodall would go on to travel the world for another 15 years as an ambassador for nature and biodiversity, and died on 1 October 2025 while on tour in Los Angeles, in her sleep. She lives on in her dream: ‘I believe each one of us can make a difference every single day.’)
As befits a primate population, Jane Goodall greets the imposing leader Karl first in the orangutan enclosure at Apenheul. The celebrated primatologist is giving a masterclass there on 18 November, organised by the Jane Goodall Institute Netherlands. She lingers, captivated, by the apes. ‘I never tire of watching them – they are endlessly interesting.’
Exactly fifty years ago, the then 26-year-old Goodall stepped ashore at Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania to study wild chimpanzee populations. It was Goodall who first demonstrated that animals make and use tools – a discovery that would turn the scientific world on its head. ‘It blurred the line between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. Many scientists were astonished, but I wasn’t. I already knew that chimpanzees were highly intelligent. Even so, it was an exciting discovery’, says the now 76-year-old Goodall in a soft voice.
Altruism
To her sorrow, she also discovered a darker side to her beloved chimpanzees. ‘I observed cannibalism and found that they wage war on neighbouring populations. I had hoped they would be kinder than us, but they resemble humans more than I expected. Yet I also saw how a male took care of an orphan who was no relation to him, purely out of compassion, love and altruism.’
The scientific world was not quick to accept that conclusion. ‘To them I was just the National Geographic cover girl’, says Goodall, referring to the photograph of her with a young chimpanzee that appeared on the front page of the magazine. ‘I had no scientific background. My mentor Louis Leakey later told me that he had chosen me precisely because I had no formal training and thought differently from the ethologists of the time. I did eventually obtain my PhD from Cambridge, having skipped the bachelor’s degree. At Cambridge they told me I had done everything wrong – for instance, giving the chimpanzees names instead of numbers and attributing emotions to them. It wouldn’t be proper science, but I didn’t let that worry me. As long as I could work with chimps – that was all that mattered to me.’
Jane Goodall conducted pioneering fieldwork on chimpanzees from 1960 to 1962 in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, now the longest-running field study of wild chimpanzees in the world. See: Discovery, Innovation & Hope – Honoring the Global Impact of Gombe and Jane Goodall. Source: Jane Goodall Institute.
That all changed when Goodall attended a conference on chimpanzees in 1986. ‘There I heard how rapidly chimpanzee numbers were declining, due to deforestation, poaching, medical experiments and the entertainment industry. I walked in with my wonderful life – spent writing, learning and teaching – and I walked out as an activist.’
And an activist she remains. At 76, she still travels three hundred days a year, preaching the necessity of conservation and sustainability to packed audiences around the world. She does not even have time to buy new shoes. ‘These shoes are nearly worn through. But I begrudge spending the only two weeks I have at home – for writing – on shopping.’
How she keeps going, Goodall herself cannot explain. ‘It comes from a sense of desperation; I have no choice. I can’t protect the chimps by staying with them. I can’t give up yet. Terrible things are still being done. But I believe that each of us can make a difference every day’, she says with conviction, gazing at the orangutans. ‘Every day, small things change. You just need millions and millions of small changes for a better world.’
Shoots
She wants to bring about that change above all in young people. In more than a hundred countries, the Jane Goodall Institute runs the Roots & Shoots programme, which encourages young people to undertake projects for people, animals and the environment. ‘Nature is resilient. But we have very little time to make green again the places we have destroyed. I see young people as a tiny seed that, with its roots and shoots, is capable of pushing aside stones and walls: the conflicts that we have created in the world.’
Goodall also campaigns for women in developing countries. ‘To protect natural habitats, we need to halt human population growth. Family planning may be controversial, but it is absurd not to talk about it for that reason. We must. It is well established that the number of children falls when women are better educated, which is why we provide microloans for sustainable projects, HIV awareness, and training.
‘The Earth is home to more people than the habitat can support. We inherited the Earth from our parents and are borrowing it from our children. But if you borrow something, you pay it back. It’s about time we start paying back.’
The Jane Goodall Institute has published an In Memoriam for her online. Photo: Jane Goodall Institute
PHOTO: JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE