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somebody who hadn’t been to university, someone whose
mind was free from the restrictive training at the time.
That was why he chose me. Today, there are hundreds of
doors open to women. It may be more of a struggle for
them to go through than for a man, but doors are open.
What would your advice be to women who want to follow in your
footsteps?
Work hard, take advantage of opportunity, and never give
up. You’ve got to really want to do this because there’s a lot
of competition and it’s hard to get money for research, so
you’d better be really passionate about it.
Having travelled the world for so many years, what changes have
you seen?
Humans are destroying the planet very, very fast. We’re
cutting down the rainforests, covering huge areas of land
with development and concrete. We’re penning animals
into factory farms with unspeakable cruelty, destroying
environments to grow grains to feed those animals. We’re
using masses of fossil fuels to transport the grains to
the animals, who get slaughtered into meat at the table.
It’s adding to the CO 2 released into the atmosphere by
our fossil fuels. The sea is increasingly polluted. The ice
is melting and the sea levels are rising. We’re using up
nature’s resources as though they’re unlimited, and they’re
not. Many young people have told me that they have lost
hope because we’ve compromised their future and there’s
nothing they can do about it. We have compromised their
future, but I think there’s a window of time to try and heal
some of those scars.
Do you feel hopeful for the future?
I think the human brain has the power to come up
with technological solutions to these problems. Nature
is also resilient: I think that places that we’ve destroyed
can once again be restored, and animals on the brink of
extinction can be given another chance. Another hope is
social media, which is effective in uniting people from all
around the world to protest about plastic pollution and
similar issues. I think there’s an indomitable human spirit,
which taps into what seems impossible and inspires us
not to give up.
Where should we focus our efforts?
Everyone should realise that every single day we live, we
make some impact. If it was just you picking up plastic,
just you turning off the lights, just you walking instead of
driving, then it wouldn’t make much of a difference. But
if it’s millions and then billions of people making ethical
choices – what they buy, what they wear, what they eat,
how they behave, how they treat animals – then the world
would start moving towards a better way. We should
think of the consequences of the little choices we make
each day, and how that will affect future generations.Text | Sarah Begum Photography | Getty, ShutterstockJANE GOODALL: LIFE IN THE FIELD
1934 – Born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall in London.
1957 – Travels to Kenya to visit a school friend, meeting
palaeoanthropologist Dr Louis Leakey while she’s there. Unbeknown
to her, Leakey is looking for someone to study chimps in their natural
habitat.1960 – Arrives with her mother at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve
(now Gombe National Park) in what is now Tanzania, where she
discovers that chimpanzees make and use tools. In the same year, she
also discovers that chimps are omnivorous, not vegetarian as previously
thought.1961 – Begins her PhD at Cambridge University, becoming one of the
few people to be admitted without an undergraduate degree.1963 – Appears on the front cover of National Geographic, bringing her
story into the public spotlight.1971 – Publishes In The Shadow of Man, a now-classic account of her
early field research in Gombe.1974-1978 – Witnesses the ‘Four-Year War’, a violent conflict between
two chimp communities in Gombe, which reveals that chimp societies –
much like human ones – have a dark side.1977 – Founds the Jane Goodall Institute to support the research in
Gombe and help protect chimpanzees and their habitats.1991 – Founds the Roots & Shoots youth programme, now active in
nearly 100 countries around the world, with the aim of inspiring the next
generation of conservationists.2002 – Named a United Nations Messenger of Peace for her work in
raising awareness of conservation and environmental issues.Taking field notes on
chimpanzees in 1987.