Protecting the Web of Life

	Primatologist Jane Goodall

It could hardly be better to have a more amazing introduction to anything that one could say. My heart is filled. Thank you, both of you. That was absolutely wonderful. That was the highlight of the week for me. That was just beautiful. Seriously, it's the concentration, it's the self-discipline, it's the training; but, above, all it's the spirit behind it.

I'm standing before you this afternoon; it's nearly the end of this wonderful Forum that Jim Garrison and many people have put together yet again, taking us further on this quest for new knowledge to help us get through the next century, and hopefully make it a better century than the last one in many, many ways. And I'd actually like to start off by acknowledging everybody on this head table, because they are all there for a reason; but of course there are many other people in this room who have helped me as well.

And I could mention everybody's names here but I'm not going to because there isn't that much time. Jim would probably get pretty frantic. But I would like to especially mention one person without whom I couldn't possibly do these lecture tours, without whom I couldn't possibly travel around America the way I do, and that's Mary Lewis. And I want Mary to stand up on your chair. Stand on your chair. There's Mary.

There's one other person I want to acknowledge who is not with us today but she is with us in spirit. And that's my mother. Because she was there for me from the very beginning. And she died in April, which, losing your best friend after 66 years, is tough. But she's here in spirit, very much so. I feel her around. And she was the one who right from the beginning nurtured this fascination I had with the animal world. We're talking about the web of life and I began to want to know about this web of life very early. I was only 18 months old when I took worms to bed with me. My mother came up and she said I seemed to be fascinated as to how they could walk without legs. She didn't say "Ugh, throw them out." She just said quietly, "If you don't take them to the garden they'll soon die." So I toddled out with them.

Many of you know the story of how this little girl who loved animals, who lived in the city, in London, and had the opportunity to go and stay on a farm in the country, meeting close up for the first time pigs and horses and cows, helped to collect the hens eggs, just curious as to where on a hen was a hole big enough for the egg to come out. I couldn't see one; you wouldn't either. And apparently I kept asking everyone, and they didn't tell me, so I hid in a henhouse for four hours at age four and a half. Think about it.

And what's so fascinating, looking back on it, there is this mind of a scientist: I wanted to know, nobody told me, I had to find out for myself. The family didn't know where I was. They called the police.

But four hours later, my mother was searching, and she saw this excited little thing rushing out, covered in straw. She didn't get mad at me. She saw my shining eyes and she sat down to hear the wonderful story of how a hen lays an egg.

So I grew up, and we had a big garden. This is when we moved near the sea. And there were all these birds and animals and insects in the garden. And going out on the cliffs to the sea there were even more fascinating animals. As I got older I would take a little notebook and I'd write down what I saw: where the birds nest, how a spider carried her eggs on her back and then, when they hatched, carried the babies. I explored the tide pools.

I had a spell of being fascinated by everything in the sea. There was no television in those days. There was no Internet. There was nothing to keep a child fastened to a television screen. So the way I learned was hands-on experiences with nature and from books. And books really began to play an important role in my life. There was Dr. Doolittle, this wonderful doctor, who could speak with animals. That was one of my first loves.

And then, amazingly, my mother saved up coupons from a cereal packet or something and got for free a book, a big book, called "The Miracle of Life." It was written for adults. It went through everything about all the diverse life forms. Now, of course, we're going back 50-odd years, but it was up-to-date for that time. It went into the circulation of the blood and what people knew about the brain. And here's this little girl—I was six—I was fascinated by these pictures, all of the different tongues that animals had in different parts of the world and what they were for, and the feet.

And my mother used to try and explain things as best she could. And more and more books I wanted to read. And I went on this adventure of the mind and to all the different countries. I was fascinated by what they then called the "Green Hell" in South America. And I loved stories of anacondas and jaguars. And in North America I was completed fascinated by the wolves and the wolverines and the moose and the bears. And up in the north, the Polar Bear; and the penguins in the south in the snowy areas. And then, moving to Australia, with the kangaroos, and New Zealand with its strange duck-billed platypus.

But it was Africa, I kept coming back again and again to Africa. I read more and more books about Africa and, yes, I fell in love with Tarzan. He wasn't nearly as beautiful as you are, but I did fall in love with him. And I was terribly jealous of his Jane.

When I wanted to go to Africa and live with animals and study books about them I was 11 years old. We were in a very different world. We were in a world where Africa was still thought of as the "Dark Continent." We heard rumors of poisoned arrows and sinister messages on drumbeats going through the steamy jungles, and lots of fierce animals who attacked humans. But that was where I wanted to go. And everybody laughed at me.

How would I get there? There were no jet planes flying back and forth with tourists in those days. My family didn't have any money. This was after the end of World War II that I really got serious. So, how was I going to get there, with no money, to the Dark Continent to do something that girls didn't do? Ha, Silly Jane, why don't you dream about something you can attain? Except my mother, who used to say, "Jane, if you really want something, you work hard, you take advantage of opportunity, and you never give up. You'll find a way."

So, this took me, to cut this all out, without any degree, saving up my money from working as a waitress, saving up the wages and the tips, for a return fare by boat to Africa, when I was invited by a school friend. Africa! I went to Kenya. I met the late Louis Leaky. He was Curator of the Natural History Museum. Here was the whole panorama of life in Africa laid out between the walls of one building. And it was a feast for me to see all these things. But they were dead and they were stuffed, and I didn't like that.

And it led to Louis Leaky inviting me, first, to go on a safari with him, to the now famous Oldivi Gorge on the Serengeti Plains. But in those days it wasn't famous at all. No human fossils had been found. And the Leaky's used to go for three months every summer: he and his wife, one other young girl and myself, and a few Kenyans. And it was wild, untouched Africa. There were all the animals of my childhood dreams. So that I woke up every morning in my dream. I was there.

This was when Louis Leaky decided to give me this amazing opportunity to go and study our closest living relatives: the chimpanzees. I had no degree. He didn't mind, but other people did. It took him a year to get money from a wealthy American businessman. See how business comes into this talk again and again this week?

And he got enough money for six months. But then the British authorities, in what was then the Protectorate of Tanganyika, said, "A girl on her own in the bush? Impossible. Preposterous." In fact, people thought Louis was amoral.

In the end, they said, "All right, but she must have a companion." So, who volunteered to come? That same remarkable mother. She set up a clinic—just four posts and a thatched roof. And she provided the simplest medication to the local fishermen—because she wasn't a doctor or a nurse. But she cared about people. She made some wonderful cures. And she got the reputation of being a white witch doctor, practicing white medicine and not black medicine, and established for me a wonderful relationship with the local people which has stood me and my students in good stead ever since.

So, from the far-off day in 1960, July the 14th—we've just had our 40th anniversary of that day—40 years, the longest study of any group of wild animals in the world.

And what a privilege, getting to know the amazing characters of those chimpanzee beings. You know some of them, some of you: Flo and FiFi, Mike, Goliath, and the famous David Graybeard, the first one to overcome his fear of this peculiar "white ape" who had invaded the territory, and so gradually introduced me to his friends, so that gradually they accepted me and no longer ran away.

And over these years, I think, looking back, the most amazing thing is how like us they really are. We know they're like us physiologically, in the structure of the brain and the central nervous system, the structure of the blood and the immune system, all these things. But that's not, for me, what is so fascinating, although it underlies what does fascinate, which is the similarities in social behavior and in the emotions, and in the intellectual abilities of the chimpanzees.

And out in the wild, I found out, the first breakthrough, was that they could use and make tools. They could pick twigs, strip off the leaves, and use them to fish for termites. That's just one example. And it was exciting, because that was the example that enabled Louis Leaky to go the National Geographic Society, who gave money for me to continue after the first six months' money was over.

And then, some of the other similarities: These chimpanzees lived in a complex society. They show sophisticated cooperation in attaining a goal. Their nonverbal communication—kissing, embracing, holding hands, patting one another on the back; they can swagger to show off; they can kick and hit and punch—all sorts of postures and gestures that we use in our nonverbal communication. And the chimps use them in the same kind of context and they clearly mean the same kind of thing.

Emotions: they show sadness and fear. They can show mental as well as physical suffering. At least they behave in ways that seem to suggest they feel emotions similar to those which we name thus in our own species, and almost certainly are very much the same.

They have a sense of humor. They have a sense of self. Sadly, they have a dark side to their nature. They are territorially aggressive, and they have behavior that is sometimes like primitive war. It makes them even more like us than we used to think. But they also show the precursors of love and compassion and empathy. They have the bright side, just like we do. And we have a choice, with these sophisticated brains, with our ability for language and culture, we can gather together in groups like this Forum and discuss ways of pushing that dark side further and further into the background.

Perhaps I can illustrate it with a story. Could you imagine for a moment that we're in the dark forest, and the canopy meets overhead. And there are little gleams of sunlight coming down through the canopy to dance about on the leaves below. And we're following two chimpanzees, a female, nine years old, and her little brother of three, and the mother is way behind us.

And as we go along this trail, with the ferns growing up at the side, suddenly the female, Pam, she stops. Her hair stands out a little. She's nervous. She looks at something on the ground in front of her. She gives a tiny "huuuhhhh," "huuuhhhh," and rushes up a tree. Brother Toff comes along, gets closer and closer. He didn't hear the sound or perhaps he doesn't know what it means. And the closer he gets, the more agitated is his sister. And she has this big grin—which is fear, it's not smiling—and every hair stands on end. And when he gets about as close as the edge of the platform here, she can't stand it anymore and she rushes down the tree, gathers him up and climbs with him to safety. And there, coiled up at the side of the trail is a very big poisonous snake.

I could talk for hours and tell you stories like this. And the more stories I told you, the more you would see this line which Western science and Western religion has drawn sharply between us on the one hand and the rest of the animal kingdom on the other. It isn't sharp at all, and you would feel that blurring, just as I have felt that blurring over the past 40 years.

You see, if you weren't so prepared to accept that it's not only human beings with personalities, capable of rational thought and knowing feelings like sadness and happiness and fear, then it gives you a new respect not only for chimpanzees but for the other amazing animals with whom we share this planet. And it raises in us ethical problems when we think how we use and abuse so many animals in our daily lives around the world. They're part of this amazing web of life, but so are we.

We're part of the Creation. We were put here with a pattern, and we are destroying that pattern. The pattern is a web, a beautiful spider's web. You know how they look when they're brand newly made and they're sparkling with dew drops in the morning. Our web has been spoiled. It's tattered a little today. And if we take just the Gombe National Park, where these so famous chimpanzees live, it's only 30 square miles. And outside it, all the trees have gone.

Forty years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, you could go for miles along Lake Tanganyika, which is about 300 miles long, and you would see forests rolling down to the water's edge. And you could climb up to the peaks of the Rift Escarpment, three miles inland, and look out eastward: forests as far as you could see. And now those trees have gone because the human population has grown, as it has grown around the world. And refugees have come pouring in from Burundi, in the north, and over the Lake from Eastern Congo.

The people are beginning to suffer because, as the tree cover goes, so the ground erodes. The thin layer of topsoil is washing down into the Lake. And the people are beginning to suffer. There are more people living there than the land can support. They can't move anywhere because there are too many people. They're too poor to buy food anywhere else. The people are beginning to suffer, as they suffer around the world when we utterly degrade the environment.

But the question is: How can we save the famous Gombe chimpanzees and their tiny island of beautiful forest when the people outside are beginning to suffer? We have a program which is trying to improve the lives of the people living in those villages, 33 villages. We have three nurseries. We have agro-forestry projects. We have conservation education, introducing the kinds of farming methods that are more suitable, perhaps, than some they were using for that steep and rocky habitat; working with groups of women, raising their self-esteem, giving them the opportunity to earn some money.

We have nine microcredit banks now based on the Grameen Bank.

And how wonderful to speak from the same podium as Muhammad Yunus, who is one of my saints, who has done more for the poorest of the poor than anyone else that I can think of. And of course we work with children, and teach them about their natural heritage. And it's working. The people are now helping us to save the chimpanzee. They're reintroducing indigenous forests. Maybe, just maybe, we can expand the area that the chimpanzees can use, and save them from otherwise certain extinction. Because that little group of chimps in this 30 square miles is only about 100 now. And that's not enough. There will be inbreeding and they will gradually die away unless we can do something about it.

Tikari is working, yes, but that's a drop in the bucket. Think of Africa. Think what's happening in Africa. Think of the forests that have gone. Think of the human populations that have multiplied. Think of the deserts that are growing when the trees go away in the tropics. Think of the suffering of millions of people as they endure famine, as they starve. They starve. How many of us know what hunger, real hunger, is? I don't. I've been hungry, but I haven't suffered from hunger, the kind that Muhammad Yunus talked about. And the food that we have eaten or not eaten, this lunch time, this one lunch time, would feed a family in Africa for months, this one lunch time.

The poverty, unless you've seen it, is almost unbelievable. The degradation of the habitat—the animals have gone, the people are suffering. We're all in this together.

A hundred years ago, there were about 2 million chimpanzees, and there was about 1 billion human beings. Today there's only about 200,000 chimpanzees, at most, spread across 21 African nations, and there are 6 billion humans. And chimpanzees are disappearing not only because their habitat is going but also because they're hunted. Mothers are shot to steal the babies to sell. But far the worst threat that hangs over the chimpanzees, the gorillas, the bonobos, the elephants, all the animals in the great Congo Basin that has been the heartland of wildlife, they're disappearing as we speak because of commercial hunting.

The local people have hunted in harmony with the natural world, their forest world, for hundreds of years. But now the logging companies are making roads deep into the heart of the forests. They're opening up the forests for settlement and the setting of snares and the spreading of diseases; because chimps catch all our diseases; so do gorillas.

And the trucks, for the first time, are providing transport, so that hunters can take the cut-up meat and sell it in the markets, and take it over national boundaries. And it's bringing in thousands and thousands of dollars. And it isn't to feed starving people; it's because many of the people here have a cultural preference for the meat of wild animals. And if this can't be halted, then there may be no chimpanzees or gorillas or any of these other animals in the next 10 to 15 years in what was their stronghold on the African continent.

And look around at the rest of the world. That's just Africa, with all its problems, with its ethnic conflicts, with its wars, with its epidemic of AIDS and other diseases, too. But if we look around the rest of the developing world, so often the picture is similar or even the same. And if we look at our world, our developed world in the north, what do we find? Do we find clean water, clean air? We find that more and more places are polluted. We find more and more people are getting sick.

There is atomic waste that is beginning to leach out. There is the emissions from factories. There are the greenhouse gases, particularly from our transport. There is a hole now in this precious envelope that protects us, or used to, from the rays that give cancer. There are still synthetic chemicals being poured out into the environment. We haven't learned the lessons from DDT and CFC's, which took 30 and 40 years to find out the cumulative long-term effects. We're still putting new chemicals out there, and apparently we can't tell the long-term cumulative effect. We haven't learned our lessons.

Global climates are changing, with untold suffering to the already suffering people in the developing world, where the tornadoes and hurricanes are getting worse, but they are too in the developed world. The ice is melting. The ice is melting. Whole island countries are going to disappear. And we've done that.

And on top of all this terrible destruction and degradation of the environment, laid over it and partly responsible for it, is human greed and cruelty and crime and war. So, we've gathered here at the Forum to talk about the next century, but that is a grim picture. And not enough people understand that the window of time for us to make change is small. We don't have 50 years. We've got to act sooner.

I didn't even mention genetically modified food, which I think is one of the biggest dangers confronting us now. Because, again, we don't know the long-term effects.

I didn't mention the fact that we can now patent animal's lives. How can we patent life? What does God have to say about that? Have we become God? Do we believe that we're God, to patent human life?

So, what hope is there for the future? Young people are here today.

Young people like I'm working with around the world. And I am taking a message of hope. There are four reasons for hope. The human brain is the first. Think what we've done. For heaven's sake, we've been to the moon. Look at this modern electronic age. We have done these things which used to be considered impossible and science fiction. Finally, we're beginning to acknowledge the problems that we've inflicted on the environment.

So can't we use the brains that we've been blessed with and join hands and hearts around the world and start to heal the wounds we've inflicted, and find ways of living in greater harmony with the natural world? We're doing it. We all know there are companies that are beginning to. They're working on it. There are people here.

There are companies we all can point fingers at and say, "Yes, they're trying to make more environmentally friendly engines." "Yes, they're cutting down their emissions." "Yes, they're learning how to use waste in a way that stops contaminating and poisoning the water that we drink." All of these things are beginning to happen.

And the human brain is also, as Joe Firmage has been talking about, which is an exciting new concept for me, the human brain is capable of creating structures in the—whatever it was, Jonathan—what did we say it was?

That's right, the economic marketplace. See, these aren't my terms; I'm not an economist.

Okay, Jonathan told me this but I've forgot: the marketplace. Okay, we're creating new structures in the marketplace, the global marketplace, that enable us to express our highest ethical principles in an area which so often, when used by the multinationals, have led to very unethical behavior in so many countries around the world.

The second point of hope is, goodness, Mother Nature is kind to us. Mother Nature is resilient. We can batter her and stamp her down and cover her with concrete and, give her a chance, and the green comes up again. Rivers that were horribly polluted—somebody mentioned the Potomac earlier—and the Potomac is now clean again and fish are there and we can eat them, and it was a stinking sewer 50 years ago. Animals on the brink of extinction — one example, the peregrine falcon, with captive breeding and protection in the wild, it can be taken off the Endangered Species List. So Mother Nature is resilient.

The world is filled with the most amazing inspirational people. I meet them wherever I go. They give me the energy to carry on. And there have been some in this Forum; I mentioned Muhammad Yunus. Mikhail Gorbachev, I grew up under the shadow of the only wall in human history built not to keep the enemy out but the people in. It's gone. And there are problems in the old Soviet Union, we all know that, but a great step towards human freedom and dignity. Nelson Mandela did the same thing in South Africa. Nobody thought that apartheid could end without a bloodbath, and it did. And yes, there are problems, but another great step towards human freedom and dignity.

Think of the people who overcome the most unbelievable physical disabilities to lead lives that are shining inspirations to everyone around them. Think of some of the indigenous people. The North American indigenous people, the Native Americans. Think how, in the space of horrible persecutions, they nevertheless hung on to their beliefs. They continued to secretly practice their traditions. And now, at what they call the start of the spirit century, they're rising up again. And those cultures are still intact. That is a miracle.

And, finally, my fourth and perhaps my most strongest reason for hope is the young people around the world today. They are beginning to understand the probleJane They are moving out into leadership positions. They have a mission. They are not necessarily getting apathetic because they've lost hope, although, unfortunately, many have. And I see my mission as taking hope to the young people of the world.

And once they are empowered to act—and increasingly this is so in increasingly more countries, where traditionally youth has been kept down and it's beginning to come up—and the strength of youth and the connectedness through the Internet is making youth something to be very hopeful for in the future. And our program, Roots and Shoots—and there are leaflets all over the place so you can read about is—is involving young people, from preschool right up to university, in hands-on projects that make the world around them a better place, a project to show care and concern for the human community, for animals, including domestic animals, and for the environment that we all share.

And this keeps me going. I see shining eyes of children of all ages, of young people of all ages, making their world a better place. Its main message, other than hope, is that every single individual makes a difference.

About 40 years ago, a chimp was born in Africa. His mother was shot. He was shipped over to a North American zoo. He lived for a long time by himself in an old-fashioned zoo cage. And, finally, a new zoo director arrived and decided to make a big enclosure, the biggest in North America. He got 19 other chimps, introduced them to each other carefully, and then finally let them out into this beautiful new enclosure.

It was fine for a while. And then one of the young chimps challenged the senior one, as young chimps will. The senior one was Jo-Jo, he who had lived for about 11 years by himself. What did he know about fighting? He was terrified. He ran into the water. And in his fear, scrambled over the barrier erected to stop the chimps drowning in the deep water beyond. He disappeared under the water. He came up, spluttering for breath three times, and then was gone.

A keeper was watching from the other side of the moat. He knew Jo-Jo weighed 130 pounds. He watched. But luckily for Jo-Jo, there was a man there, Rick Swope, who visits the zoo one day a year with his family. And he jumped in, even though the keeper tried to stop him, and told him he would be killed. And he felt about. He found this 130-pound dead weight, got it over his shoulder, scrambled over the barrier, pushed Jo-Jo up onto the bank, and turned to rejoin his slightly hysterical family.

And suddenly the woman there video-taping with the video camera—she didn't remember filming—the people started screaming at Rick to come back, "You're going to be killed." From their high vantage point, they could see three of the big male chimps charging down to see what was going on. And at the same time, Jo-Jo is sliding back towards the water, because the bank was too steep.

And you see Rick standing there. The camera goes amazingly steady. And he's got one hand on that barrier. And you see him look at his family and you see him look up towards where these chimps are coming. And you see him look down at Jo-Jo, who has just gone under the water. And for a moment he's motionless. And then he went back. He went back and again pushed Jo-Jo up. And Jo-Jo is trying feebly to grab something he can hold on to. And, just in time, grabs a strong clump of grass and manages to pull himself up. And, just in time, Rick scrambles over that barrier.

And that evening, that little bit of film was shown all over North America. And the Director of my Institute, the Jane Goodall Institute, called him up. He said, "That was a terribly brave thing you did. You must have known it was dangerous. Everyone was telling you. What made you do it?" And he said, "Well, you see, I happened to look into his eyes, and it was like looking into the eyes of a man. And the message was, `Won't anybody help me'"?

And you see, that's the look I've seen in the eyes of little chimps for sale in the African marketplaces, in the five-foot-by-five-foot prison cells of the medical research labs, from under the frills of the circus chimps, with their pulled teeth and their electric collars. I've seen it in the eyes of so many suffering animals, but I've seen it in the eyes of little children whose parents were killed in the ethnic fighting in Burundi and other parts of Africa. I've seen it in the eyes of children in our inner cities, who are caught up in gang violence, with no where to go.

And once you've seen that look and felt it in your heart, you have to try and do something about it. And here is the real hope. The real hope is that all around the world, as I travel, there are more and more people who not only see that look but feel it in their hearts and are trying to reach out and help. And the worst thing that's happening in the world today is this apathy. We know what we should and shouldn't do for the environment, for society.

But I'm one person. The little things I do can't really make any difference. It's just me. So there are millions of people around the world thinking "It's just me." Turn it around: millions, and then more millions and more millions of people, all doing what they should do. What a difference it will make.

And we in the affluent societies, think of the power we have if we would just make ethical choices in what we buy and don't buy. Because it's a consumer-driven market and we don't have to buy products from environmentally bad companies. We don't have to buy cosmetics tested on animals or things made by child slave labor. We can search for organic foods. We can search for free range eggs and things like this. And if we do that, then productivity will change. And then the poorer people can afford to live ethically, too.

So, the value of the individual, that every single day we wake up, we impact the world around us, we can help, and we get the choice as to what sort of impacts we want to make. It costs a little more. Are we or are we not prepared to buy a future for our grandchildren? I am, and I suspect you are, too.

But we have to learn to change. Is there anybody in this room who could stand up and say, "I own nothing more than what I need to live a decent life"? We have all this stuff. We don't need it. How can we learn?

But there is hope. And a gathering like this, and particularly the gathering of young people, inspires that hope. Would you do something for me? Would you all close your eyes and reach out and hold the hand of the person next to you — hopefully holding one hand in each of yours. And feel that hand you're holding. It's warm or it's cold. You can warm it or cool your own. And feel how the other hand feels. And as you feel those two hands, feel how they merge with yours, so that you almost become one with the person on either side. And that increases the strength of our hands. And it's in our hands that the future of our grandchildren lies. And there is the hope.

Let's take this message away from here, away from the State of the World Forum, let's reach out to as many others as we can. And let's not forget the animals, as well. So that when our great grandchildren are born, and theirs, there will be blue sky and trees and birds singing, and some chimpanzees swinging, and some chimpanzees in Africa.

Thank you.