The Tattered Web of Life

Jane Goodall, the celebrated primatologist best known for her work with chimpanzees in their African habitat, came to New York for the State of the World Forum to speak about the environment and wildlife preservation.

Her presentation before world leaders, businesspeople and activists from across the world brought some in the audience to tears, quite a feat in this city where the call of the wild is mostly represented in the fashionable leopard or zebra prints its denizens wear in the streets.

Forum attendees had spent an entire week listening to countless speeches on corporate responsibility and globalization trends around the world, but Goodall's message pulled out all the stops. A frail woman with graying hair pulled in a ponytail, Goodall speaks, laughs and pleads with gestures of real calm and composure, qualities she probably learned over 40 years working with chimps in Tanzania. And in a city full of posturing and mimicry, she is painfully real.

She told the story of a man who risked his life to save a drowning chimp in a zoo. The chimp had fallen in a pond that divided the chimpanzee habitat from the visitor fence. The man jumped the fence, as his wife and children called for him to get out. Other chimps nearby could attack him. But the man stayed in the cage and pulled the chimp to safety. He said he'd done it because in the primate's eyes he saw an almost human plea for help. Goodall paused. And soon the audience was in tears.

Everyone in the crowd had learned things from Goodall's research over the years: That chimps merit special concern because they are more similar to humans in their genetic and physical make up, their social behavior and their psychology, than any other animal; that chimps can make tools to hunt and solve simple problems; they can help humans understand our relationships with other non-human species.

But chimp habitat is quickly disappearing, Goodall lamented. "Twenty years ago you could go down Lake Tanganyika and there was forest as far as you could see." Today, according to Goodall, there are only 10 miles of trees around the Gombe National Park. "The chimps are isolated," said Goodall.

But Goodall has come to realize that to end the degradation and depletion of the chimpanzee habitat she can't ignore the needs of the people living in the area. "If the people are beginning to suffer, how can we just work towards saving the chimpanzee?"

She has used her understanding of how mothering styles shape chimp development to launch a new project on child development and children's relationship to the environment. "So many of our kids don't get the right early childhood experiences that they should get as young primates," said Goodall. Young primates in nature are taught by their mothers how to relate to their peers and their environment. Chimps who have a nurturing environment with supportive, protective, and affectionate mothers will more likely grow into assertive and thoughtful adults. But as more women go into the labor market their children don't get the proper nurturing that makes them functioning adults. Goodall is not debating the right of women to work, but trying to plainly talk about the evolutionary changes happening in the modern context.

In an evolutionary move up her ladder Goodall launched the Roots and Shoots Project, which has worked with 75,000 children across the globe, and started from the understanding that the future of the environment depends on those children who will form their ideas early on and learn to appreciate nature.

Roots and Shoots has 15,000 child members in Tanzania alone, where Goodall has lived and worked for four decades. It has also been established in schools and universities in 38 American states and in 30 countries around the world. Members of the group organize environmental clubs; others, such as members in Tanzania plant forests and children in inner cities in the U.S., get to go on nature field trips.

"It's amazing when you think that it costs $2,000 for a busload of children in the inner city to take a field trip to the countryside," marveled Goodall, who has been hearing the call of the wild near the Gombe National Park in Tanzania for the last forty years. Hands-on experience with nature is important for most children, she said, especially for city kids who spend more and more time playing with the Internet. This was a stark revelation for the Forum crowd, who had labored for more than 40 hours this week, searching for ways to bridge the digital divide between the developed and developing worlds. "I don't think spending much time before a computer is good for children's psyche," asserted Goodall.

To sidestep the human encroachment around the Gombe National Park, Goodall began teaching community-based conservation and environmental education to residents in the area. An institute known as Tanganyika Catchment, Reforestation and Education (TACARE) was created to raise the standard of living of local residents through sound environmental practices, education and economic empowerment. Institute staff teach residents to plant fast-growing timber for firewood, fruit trees, and vegetables, while promoting reforestation and curbing soil erosion. Other residents are hired by the organization for all types of jobs.

This effort has been extended to refugees fleeing the nearby conflicts in Burundi and Kenya, who have poured by the thousands across Tanzania's border and encroached on the Gombe chimpanzee habitat. She has also introduced microcredit banks, which give small development loans to poor people so they can start basic business enterprises and create their own incomes. "It is beginning to work; people understand what we are doing. One of the goals is not to impose anything the community does not want, but to actually work through traditional networks," explains Goodall.

But the threat to Goodall's beloved chimps is serious. In one area where refugees have settled, the number of chimps has decreased by 30 percent, as the settlers hunted wildlife for their survival, including chimps. "We are concerned about that area because there are only 100 chimps left and the gene pool has decreased, posing problems with in-breeding and making them susceptible to disease," she said.

In the late 1950s, when Goodall first traveled to Africa, one million to two million chimpanzees thrived across the continent. Today, best estimates say only 250,000 remain in just four countries.

Major reasons for the deterioration are hunters in search of wild meat and the expansion of logging projects, which have increased accessibility to once faraway sanctuaries. Goodall travels 300 days out of the year, promoting campaigns against wild meat hunting, known as the bush meat trade, and the trafficking of infant and adult chimps for the pet trade, entertainment or biomedical research.

Nobody can doubt Goodall's instinct for world change is on target. After all, in 1958, as a 23-year-old English woman from a middle-class family, she managed to be sent to Africa by Louis Leakey, the paleontologist, to study chimpanzee behavior. She had no scientific background, just courage and enthusiasm. Similarly, two years ago, inspired by a vision that may ultimately help save the chimp habitat, she moved her headquarters to Washington, DC, from where she manages a worldwide movement promoting campaigns against the destruction of the African jungle.

copyright © 2000 State of the World, Inc.