British scientist Jane Goodall, best known for her work with primates in Tanzania since the 1960s, turns 90 years old this Wednesday.
The ethologist, specialist in great apes and conservation activist, visited Spain last November, and gave conferences in which she tried to sow hope. That has been Goodall’s mission in recent years in which she has dedicated herself to traveling around the world, warning about the degradation of nature, but also highlighting the “reasons for hope.”
60 years ago, as the documentary film ‘Jane’ – which National Geographic published in 2017 – also tells, the primatologist faced machismo and rejection from the scientific community that was stung by her findings.
While closely studying chimpanzees in the jungles of Gombe, Tanzania, Goodall discovered that these apes made and used tools, something that “forever redefined our species and changed our understanding of the bond between humans and other animals.” , summarizes the Jane Goodall Spain Institute in a statement.
In a talk that the nonagenarian gave in the Canary Islands, at the University of La Laguna, Goodall explained that her curiosity and passion for the animal world dates back to when she was a child.
“I was born in 1934. At that time there was no television. “We had nature, we had our garden and we had books, so when I wasn’t at school, I was in the garden of my grandmother’s house,” she said at his conference. When it rained, he dedicated himself to reading.
In the context of the war, the British woman learned “the value of things,” because her family could not afford great luxuries but rather had enough for “a simple life.”
She loved reading, but since she didn’t have money to buy new books, she took them from the library. “My mother took books about animals. I found a small second-hand bookstore and I remember going to this bookstore on Saturday afternoons and browsing all the shelves. One day, I had saved my little pennies and was able to buy a tiny book, a version of ‘Tarzan’. So I took it home and read it under my favorite tree.”
Little Goodall “fell in love” with this Tarzan of the jungle. “And what did Tarzan do?” she asked the room, “he married the wrong Jane.”
At that age he told everyone: “When I grow up, I’m going to go to Africa. I will live with wild animals and write books about them.”
“In those days, no one thought that a girl could be a scientist, and everyone laughed at me,” Goodall said.
They asked her how she planned to go there if she had no money, and they told her that Africa was a place about which hardly anything was known and full of wild and dangerous animals, and that at the end of the day she was “just a girl.”
“But not my mother. My mother said, ‘Jane, if you really want to do this, you’re going to have to work hard, and take advantage of every opportunity. And, if you don’t give up, hopefully, you will find your way.’ “That’s what I say to young people today.”
That’s what Goodall did. After finishing school, which Goodall said he had been good at, he did not have the money to go to university. But an opportunity came. A school friend invited her to spend the holidays in Kenya, where her friend’s parents had just opened a farm. Ella Goodall worked as a waitress in London and saved for six months to buy a boat ticket there, which she circled around Africa and stopped at the Canary Islands.
Already there, someone told her that if what she wanted was to work with animals she should go see the renowned anthropologist Louis Leaky, who was in Kenya, and he, who had just lost his secretary, hired her to help him with those tasks. administrative. But by being surrounded by people who were experts in the natural world, Goodall soaked up the knowledge and soon revealed her potential.
Once Leaky confirmed Goodall’s ability to get close to animals, he realized that she was “the person he had been looking for for ten years” to study chimpanzees in Tanzania. No one supported that decision at first, says the primatologist, seeing that she was a young woman, but finally they let her go as long as she was accompanied by her.
In Tanzania, Goodall dedicated herself to chimpanzee research for the next two decades and went on to become a global reference for the protection of these great apes and their habitats. “At that time I spent hours, days in the jungle, learning about those relationships between different animals, plants, trees, the ecosystem of the jungle. “Everything was interrelated, everything depended on everything,” said Goodall in her talk in La Laguna.
She also went through academia, because Leaky, who trusted Goodall’s work and potential as a scientist, wanted “other scientists to take her seriously,” and got her a position at the University of Cambridge to study a doctorate in ethology.
In 1986, Goodall went to a conference where she saw that the threats faced by chimpanzees in Tanzania – such as habitat loss or poaching – were also occurring in other parts of the continent. “I went to the conference as a scientist and came back as an activist,” she alleged.
Since then, he has dedicated himself to traveling the world to “raise awareness about the damage inflicted on the planet.” She also continues research and promotes youth activism programs to raise awareness and mobilize new generations.
Goodall has been named UN Messenger of Peace and has received several recognitions also in Spain, such as the Prince of Asturias Award in 2003 and the International Prize of Catalonia in 2015.
For her 90th birthday, the Jane Goodall Spain Institute has enabled a form on its website where you can leave a personal message.
On the other hand, “in honor of its lifelong work”, the IJGE launches this Wednesday a campaign to warn about “the critical situation of chimpanzees in the wild, threatened by hunting and illegal trafficking, the destruction of their habitat, diseases and climate change.”
The campaign aims to promote support for the rescue and rehabilitation of orphaned chimpanzees at the Tchimpounga Rehabilitation Center, in Congo, founded by Goodall in 1992 and directed by Spanish veterinarian Dr. Rebeca Atencia, “and which has served as a home for more of 200 chimpanzees rescued from illegal trafficking and poaching,” the entity explains in a statement. All the information is now available on the IJGE website and its social networks.
