Tackling our own monkey business

Jane Goodall is legendary for her pathbreaking research on chimpanzees. But
her focus now is on conflict resolution, a field in which she is using her
knowledge in animal behaviour She gently reminded former UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan that "non-violence by itself won't help, unless we take
action in non-violent ways"
 PRAKASH CHANDRA

T HE WORLD'S foremost authority on chimpanzees, Jane Goodall closely ob
served their behaviour for decades in the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve
in Tanzania. Chimp life was still a mystery in 1957, when 23-year-old
Goodall first arrived in Kenya to realise her 'dream of studying wild
animals'. Anthropologist Louis Leakey hired her as a secretary, as that was
her only qualification. (Leakey would later become famous for his
discoveries of early human remains at the Olduvai Gorge).

The rest is history. Goodall lived in the chimps' environment and gained
their confidence, making landmark discoveries, like their omnivorous nature
and ability to make and use tools. This revolutionised scientific thinking
about human evolution.

The Jane Goodall Institutes she founded, today help her lecture and write
tirelessly, encouraging young people to appreciate all creatures great and
small. In an exclusive chat with the HT, this icon of wildlife conservation
spoke of her work, her mission as a peace envoy for the UN, and her hopes
for the future.

In 1985, Goodall's twentyfive years' anthropological and conservation
research was published, which helped scientists better understand the
relationship between all creatures and gain new insights into human
behaviour. Goodall showed how 'we share many things with chimpanzees,
besides 98 per cent of our DNA'.

Although it's difficult to prove if chimps possess emotions that correspond
with expressions, 'they do use facial expressions that look uncannily human,
and chimps often greet each other with a kiss, hug, or gentle hand touch,
and babies stay with their mothers until they reach adulthood'.
The declining number of chimps in the wild saddens her: from over a million
in Africa when she first began her study at Gombe, there are hardly 250,000
left now.

"Commercial hunting of wildlife animals has been disastrous in the last
stronghold of chimps in the great Congo Basin", she says. "In the old days,
hunters would never shoot the mother chimp for anything - that would be
stupid as she means everything to the baby chimp.

But foreign timber companies that intruded into virgin forests fuelled the
bushmeat trade, shooting everything - elephants, gorillas, monkeys, birds,
bats - that can be smoked, and trading them." So Goodall set up several
halfway homes for injured or orphaned chimps found in the wild. "Our biggest
sanctuary in Congo, Brazzaville, right in the middle of the bushmeat trade,
has 130 chimps. When local people see the infant chimps, they realise they're
too much like us and decide never to eat chimpanzee again." That's the Jane
Goodall we all know. What's not so well known is the work she's doing to
bring hope to a tense post-9/11 world by using her insights into animal
behaviour. Conflict resolution is the last thing you'd associate with this
slender conservationist as she sits in a chair, a heart-shaped metal pendant
hanging around her neck and holding her personal mascot, 'Mr. H' - a stuffed
toy monkey eating a banana.

"Mine is a message of hope," she says in a quiet voice with the sort of
oldfashioned English accent that you don't hear much any more. "All the
problems that we face on the planet - environmental and social - can be
solved through messages of hope that'll enthuse millions of young people to
break through into a better world." 'Roots and Shoots', the programme she
started for school children to learn about wild animals and conservation,
does just that, en couraging them to 'dismantle barriers that we build
between different groups'. This has worked magic among the unlikeliest of
people - Palestinians and Israelis, Congolese and Ethiopian, and even
Nepalese breaking into Maoist strongholds.

These issues have been on Goodall's mind since the terrorist attacks of Sept
11, 2001 led to calls for armed conflict. After the Iraq war began, she
issued a statement that read: "Especially now when views are becoming more
polarised, we must work to understand each other across political,
religious, and national boundaries.' During a recent UN conference of
international police forces, she suggested a larger role for them in
conflict resolution in places they are trying to police.

"It worked fabulously", she recalls. "They put wheat and fruits in large refugee camps
in Tanzania, which helped improve relations between the host community and
the Congolese!" When former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan commended her on
planting seeds for world peace, she gently reminded him that 'non-violence
by itself won't help, unless we take action in non-violent ways.

' For marginal societies that depend on nature for their livelihoods, she
advocates an incentive-based sustainable living without destroying natural
resources. She would love to see her Shoots and Roots programme introduced
in India, "as it's designed to give hope to the hopeless and improve life
for the locals who participate in conservation." She asks Indian
conservationists who face an uphill task not to lose hope. Her next book,
Hope for Nature, tells "the success stories of conservationists who rescued
animals from the brink of extinction and restored ecosystems that were
totally destroyed".

And her reasons for hope: "Children who are aware, technology-enabled human
effort, and nature's own indefatigable capacity for regeneration."
pchandra@hindustantimes.com



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