Goodall bonds with Flint, a chimpanzee born in her camp at
Gombe.
Flint was the first infant chimp whose development
Goodall was able to
follow up close.
Does the natural aggression of animals excuse or explain human aggression?
I think modern warfare is very different from chimpanzee warfare.
Chimpanzee warfare is not unlike gang warfare, but modern warfare is
about economics. It isn’t about defending territory.
You have campaigned energetically to protect wild chimpanzees. Do
you see a need to formalize those protections, by establishing a code
of animal rights, for instance?
That’s always a misunderstanding. I have to make this clear: I do
not push for rights for animals. That is not my thing. I’m not saying
it’s a bad thing. I think animals need so much help; certainly they
need lawyers working for them. But how long have we been pushing for
human rights? Look at the state of humans in the world today.
The United Nations has reported that 90 percent of chimpanzees’
African habitat will be gone by 2030 if things continue as they are
now. What’s the most urgent threat facing Gombe?
The fact that, around Gombe, there are no trees. The chimpanzees are
isolated. The chimp communities in the north and south of the park used
to spend a lot of time outside the park, and now they can’t without the
trees. When chimps do venture outside the park, they come into contact
with people. We think they catch illnesses from the local people. They
get a pneumonia-type thing; they’ve had mange. I don’t think we really
know all the diseases they get, but we know they are susceptible to all
known human infectious diseases.
Large humanitarian initiatives in Africa, like those spearheaded by
Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, understandably focus on the needs of
people. Does that human focus conflict with the needs of the animals?
Sometimes. But even if you forget the animals, what these people
sometimes totally ignore is the environment. If you cut down all the
trees at Gombe, yes, the chimps will go. But you’ll also get terrible
soil erosion, desertification, and flooding. People will suffer
terribly. So in addition to addressing the physical needs of
people—like water, sanitation, education—you also must address their
impact on the environment and our spiritual need to be connected with
nature. That’s really a psychological need that we have. I also have
problems with the way a lot of aid is delivered.
What is wrong with current African aid programs?
People are given cash. I think the reason our reforestation and
education program, TACARE [Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and
Education], has worked so well is that we don’t do this. We’ve invested
money into projects but only after sitting down with the locals—our
Tanzanian team members do the talking, not us, not white people. So the
villagers buy into our projects; they choose them. Microcredit [loans
of less than $200] is the way forward, as long as you determine that
the project these poor villagers want to develop is environmentally
sustainable—that’s key.
How do you persuade people who barely have enough to eat that they need to lead “environmentally sustainable” lives?
TACARE works to improve the people’s lives through better farming,
getting scholarships for girls to go to secondary school, HIV-AIDS
information, family planning, health care, and especially helping women
and children—because all around the world as women’s education
improves, family size goes down. Right now more people are living on
the land than it can support. And we do our youth program, Roots &
Shoots, both inside and outside the villages. As a result, the
villagers are now allowing the tree stumps that look dead to regenerate
instead of hacking away at them for firewood. We’ve already seen trees
coming back around many of these villages. The whole plan is to
persuade the villagers to leave not their best but their worst
land—land that chimps can travel through. Then our Gombe chimps will no
longer be trapped within the tiny park.
What is it like to be such a public scientist? When you attend primatology meetings these days, how are you treated?
I’m the elder female. I’m mobbed, really. My role now is to talk
about conservation and to try to inspire some of the young field
biologists who are desperate because their study animals are
disappearing. So I try to encourage them with stories like those about
TACARE and how to involve local people so their study animals survive
and they can continue their research. We each have to do our bit and
realize that when you add up those bits, you have massive change.
