PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION : JANE GOODALL INTERVIEW

April 26, 2006

www.sierraclub.org/utilities/printpage.asp?REF=/sierra/200605/interview.asp<http\

://www.rediffmail.com/cgi-bin/red.cgi?red=www%2Esierraclub%2Eorg%2Futilities%2Fp\

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Interview: Jane Goodall

" People Say That Violence and War Are Inevitable. I Say Rubbish. "

An icon of wildlife conservation tries to save the humans

by Paul Rauber

Jane Goodall would clearly like nothing better than to study chimpanzee

behavior in her beloved Gombe National Park in Tanzania (or Tanganyika, as

it was

known when she began her research there in 1960). Her early work

demonstrated

to a skeptical scientific community that chimps in the wild are unique

individuals that show emotions, use reasoning, and exhibit strong

personalities--all

traits once thought to be exclusive to humans. Besides making her world

-famous, Goodall's detailed, engaging descriptions of chimpanzee society

transformed

our notions of what it means to be a primate--and what it means to be human.

Goodall no longer does field research, however, because these days her work

is among the humans. The need to shift her focus, she says, hit her 15 years

ago when she flew over Gombe in a small plane and realized that " this little

park, which is only 30 square miles, was absolutely surrounded by cultivated

fields. " Today the Jane Goodall Institute supports family planning and rural

development in central Africa, recognizing that chimpanzees can survive into

the

future only next to stable, peaceful human populations.

Sierra: Recently you spoke at a Sierra Club conference about family

planning.

What's the connection between human population size and chimpanzees?

Jane Goodall: Worldwide there are more human children born every day than

the

total number of great apes left in the wild, which is about 300,000 at the

most and decreasing all the time. As more and more people need more and more

land, the chimpanzees are losing out.

Sierra: How are you trying to address population issues in central Africa?

Goodall: It's very hard. One way is to work with the women. Our program

around Gombe includes a component on family planning, women's reproductive

health,

HIV/AIDS education, scholarships for gifted girls, and micro-credit programs

for women to start their own environmentally sustainable projects. All over

the

world, as women's education goes up, family size has tended to drop. Already

more and more women are having three children instead of five.

Sierra: How are chimps affected by growing population?

Goodall: The main factor is the bush-meat trade. The local people already

depend on bush meat for their protein needs, but now the logging companies

have

built roads deep into the heart of the once inaccessible forests. This opens

them up to people settling along the roadsides and to disease borne by

humans,

but the worst thing is commercial hunting. Now you have hunters from the

cities

with sophisticated weapons riding on the logging trucks, stopping where the

road stops, and shooting everything--elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees,

bonobos,

antelopes, monkeys, anything that can be smoked or sun-dried, cut up, loaded

on the trucks, and taken to the cities. This is going to crash very soon if

we

can't do something about it.

Sierra: What are you doing about it?

Goodall: Our involvement started with the sanctuaries we built for the

orphan

chimpanzees. No self-respecting hunter would shoot a mother with a baby, but

this bush-meat trade is no longer made up of self-respecting people. And so

mother chimps are shot, and as there's so little meat on a small chimpanzee,

they usually try and sell the infant on the side of the road or in the

market and

get a few extra dollars. We were able to confiscate some of those baby

chimps, and that was the start of the Jane Goodall Institute's Sanctuary

Program.

I wish we were not involved in that; I really do. It's expensive, and you've

got the orphans for life. We'd love to free some of them in the forest, but

all wild chimps are territorially aggressive, and they kill strangers. So we

use

them as ambassadors.

Our biggest sanctuary is in Congo-Brazzaville, right in the middle of the

bush-meat trade, and there we have the horrifying number of 129 orphan

chimps.

When local people come and see the chimpanzees, particularly the infants,

they

say, " I'll never eat chimpanzee again--they're too much like us. "

In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development is helping us

introduce alternatives to bush meat to the villages, like fish farms. It's

also

possible to breed large rodents like cane rats, and people like eating them.

Sierra: Do you find it odd that your wildlife-conservation efforts focus as

much on people as on chimpanzees?

Goodall: There are many animal-welfare groups that sometimes seem to forget

that human beings are animals too, that we need to include them in our

sphere

of compassion. Usually it's put the other way round, but there are people,

particularly in the animal-welfare and conservation communities, who seem to

have

very little regard for the social injustices and miseries around the world.

If

you know enough about poverty and its hopelessness, you totally understand

why people are cutting down trees and setting snares. If you know families

ravaged by HIV/AIDS, or if you've been in the refugee camps and seen the

children,

you have a new perspective. And then it's irritating to find

conservationists

not wanting to bring people into the picture.

Sierra: Speaking of refugees, how are the chimpanzees affected by the wars

in

central Africa?

Goodall: The main effect is all the refugees moving around, desperate for

food. They are hunting most anything, and that includes chimpanzees and

gorillas.

Sierra: What has your many years' observation of chimpanzees taught you

about

human behavior?

Goodall: It's taught me that our aggressive tendencies have probably been

inherited from an ancient primate some 6 million years ago. But also love,

compassion, and altruism--we find these qualities in chimpanzees as well. So

if we

believe in the common ancestor, both of these characteristics--the dark side

of

our nature as well as the more noble side--we've probably brought with us

from the past. Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are

inevitable.

I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive

behavior. We're not very good at it, though, are we?

That's why I started Roots and Shoots. It began with a group of high school

students in Tanzania and is now in more than 90 countries. Its main message

is

that every individual can make a difference, every one of us. Each group

chooses three kinds of projects: one that is helping their own human

community; one

that is trying to improve things for animals, including domestic ones--a

group in Florida, for example, runs a pet-adoption table at a local shopping

center; and finally a project that helps the environment we all share.

Since 9/11, we've also had a very strong peace initiative, helping young

people better understand those of different countries, cultures, and

religions. My

hope is that these young people can break through and make this a better

world.

Paul Rauber is a senior editor at Sierra.

April 26, 2006

I appreciate the wonderful work done by Jane Goodall, but I do not

accept the idea of farming and eating cane rats as a substitute for

" bush meat, " and I think the argument that we need to give rights to

apes because they are most like us offers little hope for dogs, cats,

pigs, dolphins and other animals farther away on the evolutionary

tree. Actually rats are closer to humans genetically than the

non-primates.

Kim Bartlett

>www.sierraclub.org/utilities/printpage.asp?REF=/sierra/200605/interview.asp<htt\

p://www.rediffmail.com/cgi-bin/red.cgi?red=www%2Esierraclub%2Eorg%2Futilities%2F\

printpage%2Easp%3FREF%3D%2Fsierra%2F200605%2Finterview%2Easp>

>

>Interview: Jane Goodall

> " People Say That Violence and War Are Inevitable. I Say Rubbish. "

>An icon of wildlife conservation tries to save the humans

>by Paul Rauber

>

>Jane Goodall would clearly like nothing better than to study chimpanzee

>behavior in her beloved Gombe National Park in Tanzania (or Tanganyika, as

>it was

>known when she began her research there in 1960). Her early work

>demonstrated

>to a skeptical scientific community that chimps in the wild are unique

>individuals that show emotions, use reasoning, and exhibit strong

>personalities--all

>traits once thought to be exclusive to humans. Besides making her world

>-famous, Goodall's detailed, engaging descriptions of chimpanzee society

>transformed

>our notions of what it means to be a primate--and what it means to be human.

>

>Goodall no longer does field research, however, because these days her work

>is among the humans. The need to shift her focus, she says, hit her 15 years

>

>ago when she flew over Gombe in a small plane and realized that " this little

>

>park, which is only 30 square miles, was absolutely surrounded by cultivated

>

>fields. " Today the Jane Goodall Institute supports family planning and rural

>

>development in central Africa, recognizing that chimpanzees can survive into

>the

>future only next to stable, peaceful human populations.

>

>Sierra: Recently you spoke at a Sierra Club conference about family

>planning.

>What's the connection between human population size and chimpanzees?

>

>Jane Goodall: Worldwide there are more human children born every day than

>the

>total number of great apes left in the wild, which is about 300,000 at the

>most and decreasing all the time. As more and more people need more and more

>

>land, the chimpanzees are losing out.

>

>Sierra: How are you trying to address population issues in central Africa?

>

>Goodall: It's very hard. One way is to work with the women. Our program

>around Gombe includes a component on family planning, women's reproductive

>health,

>HIV/AIDS education, scholarships for gifted girls, and micro-credit programs

>

>for women to start their own environmentally sustainable projects. All over

>the

>world, as women's education goes up, family size has tended to drop. Already

>

>more and more women are having three children instead of five.

>

>Sierra: How are chimps affected by growing population?

>

>Goodall: The main factor is the bush-meat trade. The local people already

>depend on bush meat for their protein needs, but now the logging companies

>have

>built roads deep into the heart of the once inaccessible forests. This opens

>

>them up to people settling along the roadsides and to disease borne by

>humans,

>but the worst thing is commercial hunting. Now you have hunters from the

>cities

>with sophisticated weapons riding on the logging trucks, stopping where the

>road stops, and shooting everything--elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees,

>bonobos,

>antelopes, monkeys, anything that can be smoked or sun-dried, cut up, loaded

>

>on the trucks, and taken to the cities. This is going to crash very soon if

>we

>can't do something about it.

>

>Sierra: What are you doing about it?

>

>Goodall: Our involvement started with the sanctuaries we built for the

>orphan

>chimpanzees. No self-respecting hunter would shoot a mother with a baby, but

>

>this bush-meat trade is no longer made up of self-respecting people. And so

>mother chimps are shot, and as there's so little meat on a small chimpanzee,

>

>they usually try and sell the infant on the side of the road or in the

>market and

>get a few extra dollars. We were able to confiscate some of those baby

>chimps, and that was the start of the Jane Goodall Institute's Sanctuary

>Program.

>

>I wish we were not involved in that; I really do. It's expensive, and you've

>

>got the orphans for life. We'd love to free some of them in the forest, but

>all wild chimps are territorially aggressive, and they kill strangers. So we

>use

>them as ambassadors.

>

>Our biggest sanctuary is in Congo-Brazzaville, right in the middle of the

>bush-meat trade, and there we have the horrifying number of 129 orphan

>chimps.

>When local people come and see the chimpanzees, particularly the infants,

>they

>say, " I'll never eat chimpanzee again--they're too much like us. "

>

>In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development is helping us

>introduce alternatives to bush meat to the villages, like fish farms. It's

>also

>possible to breed large rodents like cane rats, and people like eating them.

>

>Sierra: Do you find it odd that your wildlife-conservation efforts focus as

>much on people as on chimpanzees?

>

>Goodall: There are many animal-welfare groups that sometimes seem to forget

>that human beings are animals too, that we need to include them in our

>sphere

>of compassion. Usually it's put the other way round, but there are people,

>particularly in the animal-welfare and conservation communities, who seem to

>have

>very little regard for the social injustices and miseries around the world.

>If

>you know enough about poverty and its hopelessness, you totally understand

>why people are cutting down trees and setting snares. If you know families

>ravaged by HIV/AIDS, or if you've been in the refugee camps and seen the

>children,

>you have a new perspective. And then it's irritating to find

>conservationists

>not wanting to bring people into the picture.

>

>Sierra: Speaking of refugees, how are the chimpanzees affected by the wars

>in

>central Africa?

>

>Goodall: The main effect is all the refugees moving around, desperate for

>food. They are hunting most anything, and that includes chimpanzees and

>gorillas.

>

>Sierra: What has your many years' observation of chimpanzees taught you

>about

>human behavior?

>

>Goodall: It's taught me that our aggressive tendencies have probably been

>inherited from an ancient primate some 6 million years ago. But also love,

>compassion, and altruism--we find these qualities in chimpanzees as well. So

>if we

>believe in the common ancestor, both of these characteristics--the dark side

>of

>our nature as well as the more noble side--we've probably brought with us

>from the past. Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are

>inevitable.

>I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive

>behavior. We're not very good at it, though, are we?

>

>That's why I started Roots and Shoots. It began with a group of high school

>students in Tanzania and is now in more than 90 countries. Its main message

>is

>that every individual can make a difference, every one of us. Each group

>chooses three kinds of projects: one that is helping their own human

>community; one

>that is trying to improve things for animals, including domestic ones--a

>group in Florida, for example, runs a pet-adoption table at a local shopping

>

>center; and finally a project that helps the environment we all share.

>

>Since 9/11, we've also had a very strong peace initiative, helping young

>people better understand those of different countries, cultures, and

>religions. My

>hope is that these young people can break through and make this a better

>world.

>

>Paul Rauber is a senior editor at Sierra.

>

April 26, 2006

I was a little disheartened on reading some of Jane Goodall's statements:

Her own " early work demonstrated to a skeptical scientific community that

chimps in the wild are unique individuals that show emotions, use reasoning,

and exhibit

strong personalities--all traits once thought to be exclusive to humans. "

These traits are not unique to chimpanzees alone. There were a family of

bandicoots

in our home when I was in school and college. They were individuals, too.

The parents would wait till the children ate and only then eat.

When the father was killed by one of the dogs, I remember how the mother

would keep watch

while her children ate.

Farming these for the meat is no different from killing chimps. I chicken is

a dog, is a chimp,

is a rodent.

Ms. Goodall also mentions that " many animal-welfare groups sometimes forget

that humans are

animals too " . While I am willing to concede that many individuals who care

for animals may be,

sometimes, indifferent to their fellow humans, I have never come across a

group who do not

realize that the ultimate beneficiary of the animal welfare movement are

human beings. A person

who is just and fair in her treatment of animals will normally be fair and

just in his treatment of

other humans.

Dr. S. Chinny Krishna

[journalistandanimals]

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 8:59 AM

aapn

PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION : JANE GOODALL

INTERVIEW

www.sierraclub.org/utilities/printpage.asp?REF=/sierra/200605/interview.asp<

http://www.rediffmail.com/cgi-bin/red.cgi?red=www%2Esierraclub%2Eorg%2Futili

ties%2Fprintpage%2Easp%3FREF%3D%2Fsierra%2F200605%2Finterview%2Easp>

Interview: Jane Goodall

" People Say That Violence and War Are Inevitable. I Say Rubbish. "

An icon of wildlife conservation tries to save the humans

by Paul Rauber

Jane Goodall would clearly like nothing better than to study chimpanzee

behavior in her beloved Gombe National Park in Tanzania (or Tanganyika, as

it was

known when she began her research there in 1960). Her early work

demonstrated

to a skeptical scientific community that chimps in the wild are unique

individuals that show emotions, use reasoning, and exhibit strong

personalities--all

traits once thought to be exclusive to humans. Besides making her world

-famous, Goodall's detailed, engaging descriptions of chimpanzee society

transformed

our notions of what it means to be a primate--and what it means to be human.

Goodall no longer does field research, however, because these days her work

is among the humans. The need to shift her focus, she says, hit her 15 years

ago when she flew over Gombe in a small plane and realized that " this little

park, which is only 30 square miles, was absolutely surrounded by cultivated

fields. " Today the Jane Goodall Institute supports family planning and rural

development in central Africa, recognizing that chimpanzees can survive into

the

future only next to stable, peaceful human populations.

Sierra: Recently you spoke at a Sierra Club conference about family

planning.

What's the connection between human population size and chimpanzees?

Jane Goodall: Worldwide there are more human children born every day than

the

total number of great apes left in the wild, which is about 300,000 at the

most and decreasing all the time. As more and more people need more and more

land, the chimpanzees are losing out.

Sierra: How are you trying to address population issues in central Africa?

Goodall: It's very hard. One way is to work with the women. Our program

around Gombe includes a component on family planning, women's reproductive

health,

HIV/AIDS education, scholarships for gifted girls, and micro-credit programs

for women to start their own environmentally sustainable projects. All over

the

world, as women's education goes up, family size has tended to drop. Already

more and more women are having three children instead of five.

Sierra: How are chimps affected by growing population?

Goodall: The main factor is the bush-meat trade. The local people already

depend on bush meat for their protein needs, but now the logging companies

have

built roads deep into the heart of the once inaccessible forests. This opens

them up to people settling along the roadsides and to disease borne by

humans,

but the worst thing is commercial hunting. Now you have hunters from the

cities

with sophisticated weapons riding on the logging trucks, stopping where the

road stops, and shooting everything--elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees,

bonobos,

antelopes, monkeys, anything that can be smoked or sun-dried, cut up, loaded

on the trucks, and taken to the cities. This is going to crash very soon if

we

can't do something about it.

Sierra: What are you doing about it?

Goodall: Our involvement started with the sanctuaries we built for the

orphan

chimpanzees. No self-respecting hunter would shoot a mother with a baby, but

this bush-meat trade is no longer made up of self-respecting people. And so

mother chimps are shot, and as there's so little meat on a small chimpanzee,

they usually try and sell the infant on the side of the road or in the

market and

get a few extra dollars. We were able to confiscate some of those baby

chimps, and that was the start of the Jane Goodall Institute's Sanctuary

Program.

I wish we were not involved in that; I really do. It's expensive, and you've

got the orphans for life. We'd love to free some of them in the forest, but

all wild chimps are territorially aggressive, and they kill strangers. So we

use

them as ambassadors.

Our biggest sanctuary is in Congo-Brazzaville, right in the middle of the

bush-meat trade, and there we have the horrifying number of 129 orphan

chimps.

When local people come and see the chimpanzees, particularly the infants,

they

say, " I'll never eat chimpanzee again--they're too much like us. "

In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development is helping us

introduce alternatives to bush meat to the villages, like fish farms. It's

also

possible to breed large rodents like cane rats, and people like eating them.

Sierra: Do you find it odd that your wildlife-conservation efforts focus as

much on people as on chimpanzees?

Goodall: There are many animal-welfare groups that sometimes seem to forget

that human beings are animals too, that we need to include them in our

sphere

of compassion. Usually it's put the other way round, but there are people,

particularly in the animal-welfare and conservation communities, who seem to

have

very little regard for the social injustices and miseries around the world.

If

you know enough about poverty and its hopelessness, you totally understand

why people are cutting down trees and setting snares. If you know families

ravaged by HIV/AIDS, or if you've been in the refugee camps and seen the

children,

you have a new perspective. And then it's irritating to find

conservationists

not wanting to bring people into the picture.

Sierra: Speaking of refugees, how are the chimpanzees affected by the wars

in

central Africa?

Goodall: The main effect is all the refugees moving around, desperate for

food. They are hunting most anything, and that includes chimpanzees and

gorillas.

Sierra: What has your many years' observation of chimpanzees taught you

about

human behavior?

Goodall: It's taught me that our aggressive tendencies have probably been

inherited from an ancient primate some 6 million years ago. But also love,

compassion, and altruism--we find these qualities in chimpanzees as well. So

if we

believe in the common ancestor, both of these characteristics--the dark side

of

our nature as well as the more noble side--we've probably brought with us

from the past. Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are

inevitable.

I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive

behavior. We're not very good at it, though, are we?

That's why I started Roots and Shoots. It began with a group of high school

students in Tanzania and is now in more than 90 countries. Its main message

is

that every individual can make a difference, every one of us. Each group

chooses three kinds of projects: one that is helping their own human

community; one

that is trying to improve things for animals, including domestic ones--a

group in Florida, for example, runs a pet-adoption table at a local shopping

center; and finally a project that helps the environment we all share.

Since 9/11, we've also had a very strong peace initiative, helping young

people better understand those of different countries, cultures, and

religions. My

hope is that these young people can break through and make this a better

world.

Paul Rauber is a senior editor at Sierra.

April 26, 2006

Dear Ms Bartlett, Dr Krishna and AAPN members,

Thank you for your responses to the message. I personally believe that

ethical absolutism is a difficult issue. Do only mammals have rights? Birds?

Reptiles? Amphibians? Fishes? What about invertebrates? Mosquitoes? Flies?

Cockroaches? Smallpox bacteria? Viruses? Cancer cells? Amoeba? Plants? It

could be logically concluded that all living creatures have rights, maybe

even non living entities have rights. Why kill ticks to save a cow? Why kill

maggots to save a dog? Why rescue white rats from the laboratory only to

break their necks and feed them to owls(as I know at least one Indian animal

welfare organisation to have done)? The truth is no matter what egalitarian

or holistic environmental ethic we speak of, the world is still dictated by

anthropocentric choices, some for very cogent practical reasons. Some of

course, are feel good reasons. We speak out against fur, but seldom against

silk, although silk production entails far more deaths than is involved in

fur.

For me, as I have written in this list before, it is very important to

treat humans well and I agree with Jane Goodall when she says that many

animal rights organisations ignore human suffering. I know animal rights

organisations that have denigrated black people, Asians, women, Jews,

Afghans, Iraqis, Chinese, Indians, Hindus and tribals. I know animal rights

activists who would rather watch the Planet's Funniest Animals than footage

of Abu Ghraib or Sudan or Somalia or impoverished parts of any country. I

know animal rights activists who would treat 'humans like dogs' and 'dogs

like humans'. For me, treating humans well is of the utmost necessity since

humans are my conspecifics and I have a responsibility towards my own

species. If it comes to the crunch between saving a dog and a baby, I

would save the baby simply because I belong to his species but I hope I do

not have to face a situation like that. Since I believe that humans are

animals too(the evolutionary point of view that smacks conventional

patronising religious views left, right and centre), I think it is

quintessential to treat fellow humans well, regardless of nationality,

colour or race. The same evolutionary viewpoint urges me to treat animals

well since there is no credible cosmological evidence that God(however we

may define God) created the universe for humans as a pinnacle. I admire Dr

Wedderburn as much for him being a doctor as for being an animal rights

activist. He does both human rights and animal rights and that is fabulous

which is why I like and respect him so much.

It is true that rats can be very intelligent(although I would love to read

evidence that suggests they are genetically closer to us than primates) but

in a place where people cannot get enough protein without eating meat,

I cannot strongly stand up for veganism(that may entail people eating the

most endangered species as Jane Goodall says). Obviously, it is debatable if

eating rats is preferable to eating chimpanzees since both are animals. A

rat thinks no less of its life than a chimpanzee. I am a vegetarian but I am

not a vegetarian activist since I am not convinced that man is biologically

a herbivore. If people are eating animals in win lose situations, I am

willing to accept that.

This is a complex topic and as I said earlier, there are no clear cut

answers in black and white. I generally prefer to set my own ethical

standards in life regardless of what so called religious prophets or

celebrities might have said or done. As Stephen Hawking mentioned: " One has

to be grown up enough to realise that life is not fair. You just have to do

the best you can in the situation you are in. "

This is not a satisfactory explanation for the rats versus chimpanzees

debate(just as I am a bit undecided on the worth of animal experimentation

in Oxford University since I am alive because of medicines that have been

tested on animals but at the same time feel that animals are treated badly

in laboratories) but I wanted to share these thoughts with you. Thanks for

writing and your views are appreciated.

Best wishes and kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

On 4/26/06, Dr.Chinny Krishna <drkrishna wrote:

>

> I was a little disheartened on reading some of Jane Goodall's statements:

>

> Her own " early work demonstrated to a skeptical scientific community that

> chimps in the wild are unique individuals that show emotions, use

> reasoning,

> and exhibit

> strong personalities--all traits once thought to be exclusive to humans. "

> These traits are not unique to chimpanzees alone. There were a family of

> bandicoots

> in our home when I was in school and college. They were individuals, too.

> The parents would wait till the children ate and only then eat.

> When the father was killed by one of the dogs, I remember how the mother

> would keep watch

> while her children ate.

>

> Farming these for the meat is no different from killing chimps. I chicken

> is

> a dog, is a chimp,

> is a rodent.

>

> Ms. Goodall also mentions that " many animal-welfare groups sometimes

> forget

> that humans are

> animals too " . While I am willing to concede that many individuals who care

> for animals may be,

> sometimes, indifferent to their fellow humans, I have never come across a

> group who do not

> realize that the ultimate beneficiary of the animal welfare movement are

> human beings. A person

> who is just and fair in her treatment of animals will normally be fair and

> just in his treatment of

> other humans.

>

> Dr. S. Chinny Krishna

>

> [journalistandanimals]

> Wednesday, April 26, 2006 8:59 AM

> aapn

> PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION : JANE GOODALL

> INTERVIEW

>

> www.sierraclub.org/utilities/printpage.asp?REF=/sierra/200605/interview.asp

> <

>

> http://www.rediffmail.com/cgi-bin/red.cgi?red=www%2Esierraclub%2Eorg%2Futili

> ties%2Fprintpage%2Easp%3FREF%3D%2Fsierra%2F200605%2Finterview%2Easp>

>

> Interview: Jane Goodall

> " People Say That Violence and War Are Inevitable. I Say Rubbish. "

> An icon of wildlife conservation tries to save the humans

> by Paul Rauber

>

> Jane Goodall would clearly like nothing better than to study chimpanzee

> behavior in her beloved Gombe National Park in Tanzania (or Tanganyika, as

> it was

> known when she began her research there in 1960). Her early work

> demonstrated

> to a skeptical scientific community that chimps in the wild are unique

> individuals that show emotions, use reasoning, and exhibit strong

> personalities--all

> traits once thought to be exclusive to humans. Besides making her world

> -famous, Goodall's detailed, engaging descriptions of chimpanzee society

> transformed

> our notions of what it means to be a primate--and what it means to be

> human.

>

> Goodall no longer does field research, however, because these days her

> work

> is among the humans. The need to shift her focus, she says, hit her 15

> years

>

> ago when she flew over Gombe in a small plane and realized that " this

> little

>

> park, which is only 30 square miles, was absolutely surrounded by

> cultivated

>

> fields. " Today the Jane Goodall Institute supports family planning and

> rural

>

> development in central Africa, recognizing that chimpanzees can survive

> into

> the

> future only next to stable, peaceful human populations.

>

> Sierra: Recently you spoke at a Sierra Club conference about family

> planning.

> What's the connection between human population size and chimpanzees?

>

> Jane Goodall: Worldwide there are more human children born every day than

> the

> total number of great apes left in the wild, which is about 300,000 at the

> most and decreasing all the time. As more and more people need more and

> more

>

> land, the chimpanzees are losing out.

>

> Sierra: How are you trying to address population issues in central Africa?

>

> Goodall: It's very hard. One way is to work with the women. Our program

> around Gombe includes a component on family planning, women's reproductive

> health,

> HIV/AIDS education, scholarships for gifted girls, and micro-credit

> programs

>

> for women to start their own environmentally sustainable projects. All

> over

> the

> world, as women's education goes up, family size has tended to drop.

> Already

>

> more and more women are having three children instead of five.

>

> Sierra: How are chimps affected by growing population?

>

> Goodall: The main factor is the bush-meat trade. The local people already

> depend on bush meat for their protein needs, but now the logging companies

> have

> built roads deep into the heart of the once inaccessible forests. This

> opens

>

> them up to people settling along the roadsides and to disease borne by

> humans,

> but the worst thing is commercial hunting. Now you have hunters from the

> cities

> with sophisticated weapons riding on the logging trucks, stopping where

> the

> road stops, and shooting everything--elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees,

> bonobos,

> antelopes, monkeys, anything that can be smoked or sun-dried, cut up,

> loaded

>

> on the trucks, and taken to the cities. This is going to crash very soon

> if

> we

> can't do something about it.

>

> Sierra: What are you doing about it?

>

> Goodall: Our involvement started with the sanctuaries we built for the

> orphan

> chimpanzees. No self-respecting hunter would shoot a mother with a baby,

> but

>

> this bush-meat trade is no longer made up of self-respecting people. And

> so

> mother chimps are shot, and as there's so little meat on a small

> chimpanzee,

>

> they usually try and sell the infant on the side of the road or in the

> market and

> get a few extra dollars. We were able to confiscate some of those baby

> chimps, and that was the start of the Jane Goodall Institute's Sanctuary

> Program.

>

> I wish we were not involved in that; I really do. It's expensive, and

> you've

>

> got the orphans for life. We'd love to free some of them in the forest,

> but

> all wild chimps are territorially aggressive, and they kill strangers. So

> we

> use

> them as ambassadors.

>

> Our biggest sanctuary is in Congo-Brazzaville, right in the middle of the

> bush-meat trade, and there we have the horrifying number of 129 orphan

> chimps.

> When local people come and see the chimpanzees, particularly the infants,

> they

> say, " I'll never eat chimpanzee again--they're too much like us. "

>

> In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development is helping us

> introduce alternatives to bush meat to the villages, like fish farms. It's

> also

> possible to breed large rodents like cane rats, and people like eating

> them.

>

> Sierra: Do you find it odd that your wildlife-conservation efforts focus

> as

> much on people as on chimpanzees?

>

> Goodall: There are many animal-welfare groups that sometimes seem to

> forget

> that human beings are animals too, that we need to include them in our

> sphere

> of compassion. Usually it's put the other way round, but there are people,

> particularly in the animal-welfare and conservation communities, who seem

> to

> have

> very little regard for the social injustices and miseries around the

> world.

> If

> you know enough about poverty and its hopelessness, you totally understand

> why people are cutting down trees and setting snares. If you know families

> ravaged by HIV/AIDS, or if you've been in the refugee camps and seen the

> children,

> you have a new perspective. And then it's irritating to find

> conservationists

> not wanting to bring people into the picture.

>

> Sierra: Speaking of refugees, how are the chimpanzees affected by the wars

> in

> central Africa?

>

> Goodall: The main effect is all the refugees moving around, desperate for

> food. They are hunting most anything, and that includes chimpanzees and

> gorillas.

>

> Sierra: What has your many years' observation of chimpanzees taught you

> about

> human behavior?

>

> Goodall: It's taught me that our aggressive tendencies have probably been

> inherited from an ancient primate some 6 million years ago. But also love,

> compassion, and altruism--we find these qualities in chimpanzees as well.

> So

> if we

> believe in the common ancestor, both of these characteristics--the dark

> side

> of

> our nature as well as the more noble side--we've probably brought with us

> from the past. Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are

> inevitable.

> I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive

> behavior. We're not very good at it, though, are we?

>

> That's why I started Roots and Shoots. It began with a group of high

> school

> students in Tanzania and is now in more than 90 countries. Its main

> message

> is

> that every individual can make a difference, every one of us. Each group

> chooses three kinds of projects: one that is helping their own human

> community; one

> that is trying to improve things for animals, including domestic ones--a

> group in Florida, for example, runs a pet-adoption table at a local

> shopping

>

> center; and finally a project that helps the environment we all share.

>

> Since 9/11, we've also had a very strong peace initiative, helping young

> people better understand those of different countries, cultures, and

> religions. My

> hope is that these young people can break through and make this a better

> world.

>

> Paul Rauber is a senior editor at Sierra.

>

April 27, 2006

Dear Mr. Ghosh,

>For me, as I have written in this list before, it is very important to

>treat humans well and I agree with Jane Goodall when she says that many

>animal rights organisations ignore human suffering.

I do not think that anybody who has responded would have said otherwise.

May I ask you for specifics regarding the " many animal rights organizations

who ignore human suffering " ?

Most importantly, I think you will agree that the vast majority of people

who speak out against human suffering are deafeningly silent with regard to

animal abuse? Have you ever asked these people to enlarge their circle of

compassion to include animals, too?

>If it comes to the crunch between saving a dog and a baby, I

>would save the baby simply because I belong to his species but I hope I do

>not have to face a situation like that.

So would other " animal activists " with exceedingly rare exceptions.

However, for us it is not child-or-animal; it is child-and-animal in

what we do.

Regarding people who feel that their mandate is to speak out against animal

abuse,

let them do their bit - we humans have an excellent spokeperson in you to

take

care of our interests.

S. Chinny Krishna

[journalistandanimals]

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 11:42 PM

Dr.Chinny Krishna

Cc: aapn

Re: PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE CONSERVATION : JANE GOODALL