Jane Goodall at the Johannesburg Zoo.

[Guest guest]

 

Animals learn to be human

 

 

July 12 2008 at 10:03AM

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Sheree BégaJane Goodall purses her lips together as if she is about to whistle. Then, she bursts into a haunting chimpanzee greeting call that seems to erupt from deep within her belly. "That's how you say hello in the chimp world," the world-renowned primatologist explains as her rendition is saluted by a rush of enthusiastic applause from the transfixed audience of conservationists and schoolchildren gathered at the Johannesburg Zoo. Goodall begins every lecture with a chimp call - and it's become her signature hello to the public. "When you climb the mountains in Gombe (National Park in Tanzania), you hope that somewhere you'll hear a chimp greeting in the morning and say hello," she says. "The great thing is that every chimp has his or own voice and when you hear the sounds, you know exactly who is making the call." At 74, Goodall's indomitable spirit remains intact. She spends 300 days of the year travelling the world, highlighting the plight facing chimpanzees, their forest habitat and nurturing environmentalism among young people.Today, her silver-grey hair is slung back in a trademark ponytail and she is bundled in a borrowed jacket and jersey - she didn't bring any winter clothes on her three-day visit to SA this week. Goodall, though, is in pain. Last week, she dislocated her shoulder and sustained two cracked ribs after a dangerous tussle with a rock on a now rare visit to Gombe, the rugged mountainous home of the chimpanzees that first enchanted her in the 1960s.It was a "stupid" accident. "I wanted to sit at the waterfall where I learnt about the behaviour of chimps for the first time as a 26-year-old. I tried to follow a chimp but I think chimps have a sense of humour," she says, gesturing to one arm in a sling."He was leading me up a ridge. It was a steep trail. There was nothing to hold onto. I was nearly at the top and pulled on a rock to pull myself up. "You know it's like a nightmare where you want to run away and you can't. I watched the rock detach itself and saw it move from its secure mooring in the earth. The rock and I tumbled twice together. It landed on my chest." It was an agonising five days later before Goodall's shoulder was reset in a Ugandan health facility where staff administered ketamine, an animal tranquiliser, to ease her pain. At her zoo talk, Goodall, the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees, delved into more than 30 years of pioneering work in the wild of Gombe's forests, where she observed and gradually befriended its chimp population. Her research revealed chimpanzees as intelligent, social and complex beings adept at a range of behaviours - including the use of tools - and emotions, which until then were thought the exclusive domain of humans. At first, the science fraternity dismissed her findings."Chimps are more like us than any living creature," says Goodall, explaining they share more than 98% of human beings' genetic code. "You could get a blood transfusion from a chimp. "They do the things we used to think only humans can do. They feel emotions, like happiness and sadness, and have a sense of humour."We're standing where we used to think there was an unbridgeable chasm between us, and the rest of the animal kingdom, and the chimp looks into our eyes and says: 'Don't you understand that our lives matter, that we too have personalities, minds and feelings?' "And they'll turn over their shoulder and look at all the other animals in the animal kingdom and say: 'Don't they matter too?'" Goodall has referred to Gombe's lush forests as a cathedral and tries to visit there twice a year for "spiritual strength". But its forest and the others that make up the lush Congo Basin are vanishing fast, cleared for crop growing, grazing and timber. Loggers are destroying vast tracts, opening the door for commercial hunters, who indiscriminately exterminate the forests animal inhabitants to satisfy the burgeoning taste for bush meat. In 1900, there were up to two million chimps in Africa - that number has plummeted to fewer than 150 000 today. The expansive forests that Goodall once ventured into have disappeared and its 100 chimps are surrounded by farmland."They're trapped. There are only bare fields around them. They used to go out of the reserve to feed, but not anymore." Thousands of refugees fleeing war in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo into Tanzania have put more strain on the fragile forest region. Goodall points out her institute is working with Gombe's poverty-stricken villagers with education, health and microcredit schemes, to ultimately safeguard wild habitat."We're giving fish hooks instead of fish. Each of the villagers puts aside an area for regeneration and this creates a corridor for the chimps so they can go out again." The bush meat trade poses one of the greatest threats to chimpanzee survival - and other creatures in Africa's forest ecosystems. "Subsistence hunting in the forest happened for generations and didn't harm anything but the bushmeat trade is the commercial hunting for food. The hunters kill everything. "People say to me you can't deprive poor people of meat but we're talking about the commercial trade in bushmeat, which is absolutely eliminating all forms of protein for people who've lived on it for years."We must protect the forest. Unless they're extinct, animals can make a comeback." More money must be given to governments in Central Africa, though "viewed as corrupt", to spare their forests from logging concessions. "We have the technology to check they're honouring their agreements. We need more political will in Africa to combat the bush-meat trade."Exploitation persists in Africa despite the end of colonialism and apartheid. "I've met so many thoughtful young people (in Africa) with no hope but the problem often comes from outside. "There are still rich countries exploiting the natural resources of Africa. I'ts rape and it's continuing and involving China in a major way."Goodall addresses the over 40s in the audience. "Can any of you look around and say you haven't compromised the future of our young people? "When I think of my grandchildren, I think of how much has changed since I was that age and I don't know what I feel: anger, shame, shock and desperation."If the younger people lose hope then we may as well kill ourselves trying to save the chimps and the rainforests but might as well give up if we don't raise a new generation to do it."That's why Goodall is building a "critical mass" of young environmental champions devoted to environmental stewardship as part of her Roots & Shoots programme, which she started in Tanzania in the early 1990s with 16 youngsters. Its grown to over 9 000 active groups of volunteers, from pre-schools to university in over 60 countries, including several in South Africa. She compares its work to the life force of a tiny seed, which grows to break through boulders and walls to reach water and sunshine. "The boulders and the brick walls are the problems humans have inflicted on the planet including cruelty, poverty, human suffering and environmental problems. "But these thousands of youngsters can break through those walls and boulders."People ask where I get the energy to travel 300 days around the world. It's from these young people, who discuss the problems facing the world and are empowered to correct them. They have so much dedication and courage."She relates a heartening anecdote about two young Roots & Shoots volunteers from the Lugufu refugee camp in western Tanzania - where members educate refugees about beekeeping, chicken rearing and the bushmeat crisis - who saved the life of a baby bushbuck, which their friends intended to kill. "Think about your life, don't you feel extremely lucky to have your life ahead of you?" one asked their friends. The bushbuck was released. "When I asked the nine-year-old girl why, she wrote back in a note in French. "It said: 'I dream of a forest where there's a beautiful male bushbuck and he won't run away when I approach but will say thank you for saving my life.'"These young people have to fight very hard to get anything and face dangers and innumerable hardships. But they say doing things that help people makes them feel good. "Looking ahead at this troubled world, that's the kind of philosophy we need. Values that say: 'We need money to live but don't want to live for money.' We need to create different leaders, lawyers, teachers and politicians." She adds she has not given up on adults as that would negate the environmental work done by young people. And although her schedule is exhausting, Goodall is unlikely to retire soon."I travel 300 days a year - more last year. Sometimes I hate it. Since 9/11, they scan you from every area at the airports and you have to take your shoes off 50 times. "I have people going through my underwear and saying: 'I've watched every one of your shows'. "Or they ask for my autograph while they're still searching me."To counter the carbon emitted by her air miles, she "walks the talk" and lives a simple waste-free life. "If you look at old pictures of me, I'm still wearing the same clothes today," she smiles, somewhat proudly.