Life and Leisure

'Saving the world' one city at a time

By Erik Nilsson (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-28 07:56

Dr Jane Goodall says she gets energy from young people and their shining eyes. [Photos by Jonah M. Kessel / China Daily]

World's leading primatologist Jane Goodall, 76, whose seminal findings have redefined what it means to be human, says she is inspired by her young followers. Erik Nilsson reports

The 76-year-old woman onstage pant-hoots, grunts and howls at the children who have packed the auditorium in Shanghai's Gezhi High School. "That means hello," in the language of chimpanzees, British primatologist Jane Goodall tells the students.

"That (sound) makes me feel like I'm back in the forest that I love," she says. "And I wish I was."

Most of the students, as members of the Roots & Shoots youth organization Goodall initiated in Africa 19 years ago, know about the wild place she is talking about - Tanzania's Gombe National Park.

Half a century ago, the researcher traveled to this rainforest, where Goodall made observations of these apes that are hailed as not only redefining what it means to be a chimp but also what it means to be human.

She was the first to observe that chimps make and use simple tools, communicate and show emotions, have complex social structures and wage simple warfare.

"It is very, very clear that there is no sharp line dividing us humans from the rest of the animal kingdom," Goodall says.

"We're part of the animal kingdom. And that gives us a new respect not just for the chimpanzees but also for the other amazing animals with whom we share - or should share - this planet."

Her paradigm-shifting findings have made her a household name in the West and an increasingly recognized icon in China. She left the country on Sept 27 after spending two weeks of her global tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of the day the Gombe legacy began and promoting Roots & Shoots.

And most of these children, as members of the environmental and humanitarian organization, also know why the naturalist isn't in the tropical woodlands where she longs to be.

Upon realizing the Gombe and its chimpanzees were imperiled by threats, such as deforestation, while attending the first-ever conference for all of Africa's chimp researchers in 1986, Goodall decided she needed to leave Gombe to fight for its survival, a mission that expanded to encompass "saving the world" for all living things, she says.

Since then, she has not stayed in any one place for more than three consecutive weeks and travels an average of 300 days a year. She has become a regular visitor to China since her first trip to the country in 1998.

This time, she packed her schedule with events in the three cities where Roots & Shoots has offices - Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai.

China's Roots & Shoots offices support more than 600 of the tens of thousands of groups in 121 countries. The Shanghai branch alone has founded groups in more than 200 schools in several provinces, has 635 registered adult volunteers and claims to have directly influenced more than 130,000 individuals in the city's greater area.

Across the country and globe, the organization's clubs operate autonomously but are unified by a calling to protect the environment, and help animals and human communities.

China's first Roots & Shoots branch has a direct link to the original group formed in 1991 in Tanzania's Dar es Salaam city - Canadian Greg MacIsaac was there when Goodall led 16 high school students to start the organization. When the education specialist left Tanzania to work in Beijing, Goodall agreed to visit him only if he started Roots & Shoots in both an international and local school. In 1994, he helped found China's first group at the Western Academy of Beijing and the second at a public school. Four years later, Goodall fulfilled her promise.

His stint in the Chinese capital was meant to be temporary but he remains in the city and is a board member of the Jane Goodall Institute, which continues the Gombe research and conservation efforts.

"I found Chinese students were so receptive to environmental protection and Jane's message, I said, 'I can't leave now'," MacIsaac, 57, says.

American Tori Zwisler left a "fabulous" job working for the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum to found the Shanghai office 10 years ago, after attending a teachers' convention where Goodall was the keynote speaker.

"I sat in the front row, listened to her and cried my eyes out," Zwisler says.

At the dinner that night, Goodall asked her to start a chapter of Roots & Shoots in Shanghai.

"I said 'yes' and cried some more," says Zwisler, who is chair of the board.

The Shanghai office's executive director, 28-year-old Zhong Zhengxi, got involved with the group when Goodall visited her school - Shanghai No 3 Girl's High School, the first in the city to have a Roots & Shoots group - in 1998.

"I had always been an animal lover but I don't think I was ready to dedicate a lot of time to an environmental cause or to protect the animals I was basically just thinking about getting a pet and going to the zoo," Zhong says.

"But when Jane Goodall came, it was really eye-opening and mind-opening."

Zhong says she shares her mentor's hope for the country's youth.

"When they become leaders of our country," she says, choking back tears, "our country will be a wonderful place for most people to live in, I hope."

Audience members wept at every talk Goodall gave during her recent Shanghai visit but Goodall says she has had many moving encounters in the country.

She recalls one young man she met during her early visits who told her he made a mission of photographing animal cruelty in the meat markets and by hunters after reading her book In the Shadow of Man at age 12.

He received death threats from those whom he exposed but also appeared on three national TV stations with his message.

"He spoke very emotionally with tears running down his face, and I think it must have made a huge impact on the nation," Goodall says. He went on to work for the government, undertaking "dangerous assignments", documenting animal trafficking, she says.

Goodall says she was also was touched by the efforts of two Chengdu Roots & Shoots groups raising awareness about giant pandas and moon bears, and the businesswoman who spent her entire fortune of more than $1 million to open the Beijing Human and Animal Environmental Center animal shelter.

And she'll "always remember" a speech by one girl of about 10 who attended a Beijing migrant school, she says.

"She said, 'Until I became part of Roots & Shoots I always felt that we migrants were so inferior to all the students in Beijing. They knew everything and we had no education. And now through RS, we have discovered we know an awful lot they don't know about farming and animals and the land and the importance of the land'," Goodall continues.

"She said, 'Now we go in and talk to the students in the big schools in Beijing, and they come out to us and we are teaching them things And now I feel equal, and now I feel I have a future, and now I know my life is important like Dr Jane'."

Goodall says she and the children provide inspiration for each other.

"Where do I get my energy, traveling 300 days a year? You know, I'm 76 for heaven's sake!" she says.

"I get the energy from the young people and their shining eyes, wanting to tell Dr Jane what they've done to make this a better world. And it does give one hope."

When she ended her talk to the auditorium of schoolchildren at Gezhi by asking, "Can we save the world?" the students resolutely shouted, "Yes!"