The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: You’re holding a stuffed animal. Tell me about this.
Jane Goodall: This is Mr. H. He’s 35 years old, given to me by a man called Gary Horn, who went blind when he was 21 in the US Marines decided to become a magician. Children don’t realize he’s blind, and then he’ll say, “Something may happen in your life. Never give up. There’s always a way forward.”
So he thought he was giving me a stuffed chimpanzee for my birthday, and I made him hold a tail. Gary, chimps don’t have tails. So he said, “never mind, take him where you go. You know my spirit’s with you.” So he’s an example of the indomitable human spirit.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: And I know these have been part of you talking to the next generation, the youth about conservation and the work that still needs to be done still.
Jane Goodall: It needs to be done more than ever before. We are continually destroying the natural world—and not only are we part of it, we depend on it. The food, water, fresh air, clothes, everything. But we depend on healthy ecosystems and one by one by one, we are destroying them.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: People right now, I think feel a little hopeless. I talk to people a lot, “what can I do, what can still be done?” I’m sure you’ve had moments in your career where you’ve felt that way, but you didn’t stop. So what would you wanna say to people that are feeling lost, confused, not so hopeful?
Jane Goodall: I speak to hundreds of them because they all come and say that to me and I say, you know, we have an expression. “Think globally, act locally.” It’s the wrong way around because if you think globally, you become depressed, you can’t help it. Now it’s grim time we’re living in, so, but go to your, in your community, what do you care about there? Maybe you don’t like the letter, maybe you don’t want the the city council to build yet another supermarket.
See what you can do about it. Get people to help you. You find you make a difference that makes you feel good, so then you want to make a bigger difference. Then you inspire more people and then you realize around the world there are people just like me, and then you dare think globally.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: How have you and your relationship changed with these efforts? Because I’m sure you felt very strong and ready to go when you were younger, how has that evolved as you’ve gotten older—with your relationship, really with the natural world and the work you’re doing?
Jane Goodall: Well, you know, when I was little, I wanted to do nothing except live in Africa and study animals. And I did that for many years.
And then when I realized the plight of chimps across Africa, numbers dropping forests being destroyed, um. I realized that I needed to leave Gombe, a place I love and see what I could do. And so that led to the Jane Goodall Institute starting a program to alleviate poverty and the people who were cutting down the trees just to make some money from charcoal or timber or something like that.
And that program is working. It’s now in six African countries where different chapters of JGI work to conserve and study chimpanzees.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: What would be that one message you would want to give to people to keep that hope up as they deal with climate change and a lot of regulation, especially here in the United States, being rolled back beyond.
Just think locally what? What is a piece of advice that can maybe give us some fuel to keep fighting like you are?
Jane Goodall: Well, we have a program for young people from kindergarten through university called Roots and Shoots. Which began with 12 high school students in Tanzania. It’s now in 76 countries with members from kindergarten through university.
And the main message every single day you live, you make some kind of impact. You get to choose what sort of impact you make, and that’s a message for all of us. We all make a difference every day, and by making the right choices. What do you buy? How was it made? Did it harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like factory farm?
Is it cheap ’cause of unfair wages? Then look for a more ethical alternative, and it might cost a bit more, but you will value it more and waste less.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: Tell me a little bit about what goes into these talks and what people can expect.
Jane Goodall: Well, what people can expect is a sort of look back over 91 years, what’s changed?
We are living through dark times. People are losing hope. Why should we have hope? How can we have hope? And also, in between all of that, it’s, you know, we, we need a new attitude to the environment. We need to understand where part of it and depend on it. We need to understand that animals like us have personalities, minds, and emotions.
We need to start thinking about how we treat them in the wild and domestic animals. We need to think how eating a lot of meat is destroying the environment all over the world. Because these billions of animals in factory farms have to be fed. Huge areas of land are cleared to grow food for them. More food is grown for animal than for starving people, which is shocking.
And water. It takes a lot of water to change plant-animal protein. And they all produce methane gas in their digestion. And that’s a very virulent greenhouse gas. So, you know, I think the main thing is for people to start thinking. About their own environmental footprint, what they can do, the choices they make each day.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: So much of the work has been holding a mirror up to ourselves and our relationship with the natural world as well as chimps and other animals. Yes. Relationship. What can we take away today from chumps? Is there a lesson we need to be thinking about?
Jane Goodall: Well, there’s a lesson in the way that the mothers treat their young. The mothers, the good mothers have the same quality my mother had. They’re supportive of their young ones, and because we’ve now been studying them for 65 years, we know that the chimps who had supportive mothers never mind whether they were high ranking or low ranking. If they supported their child, then the child will grow up to be a better mother.
And if a male, a higher position in the male hierarchy. We can also learn that they’re pretty good at resolving conflict. And we can also realize, which is a bit of a shock, but they have a dark side, can be brutal, aggressive, and kill, but they can also be compassionate and and altruistic.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: That’s in all of us. Hopefully
Jane Goodall: That’s the point. We, they’re just like us. We have a dark side. We have a lighter side, we have a different kind of intellect. We should be able to suppress that dark, aggressive side. We are not doing a very good job right now.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: I love that… And I was tipped off that you can perform something called a pant-hoot?
Jane Goodall: Mm-hmm.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: What, what is this? Explain this and, show it to me if you can.
Jane Goodall: You mean listen to it? I can’t show you.
Ryan Patrick Hooper: You can show me, but we can hear it on the radio.
Jane Goodall: Yeah. Well, chimps don’t live in a group. They live in scattered units, which sometimes come together. And so they need to maintain contact with each other.
And so each chimp has an individual pant-hoot. So if you hear it on the other side of the valley, you know, oh, there’s mom. So [performs pant-hoot]
Ryan Patrick Hooper: Dr. Jane Goodall, thank you so much. Thank you.
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