The renowned conservationist Dr Jane Goodall has warned that we are in the midst of a great extinction.
“I am a little bit exhausted,” she admits. “I’ve come here from Paris. And after here I go to Berlin, then Geneva. I’m on this tour talking about the danger to the environment and some of the remedies,” she says.
“We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction,” Dr Goodall. “The more we can do to restore nature and protect existing forests, the better.”
“We still have a window of time to start slowing down climate change and loss of biodiversity,” Dr Goodall says. “But it’s a window that’s closing.”
Destruction of forests, and other wild places, she points out, is intrinsically linked to the climate crisis.
“So much has changed in my lifetime,” she says, recalling that in the forests of Tanzania where she began studying chimps more than 60 years ago, “you used to be able to set your calendar by the timing of the two rainy seasons”.
“Now, sometimes it rains in the dry season, and sometimes it’s dry in the wet season. It means the trees are fruiting at the wrong time, which upsets the chimpanzees, and also the insects and the birds.”
Over the decades that she has studied and campaigned to protect the habitat of wild chimpanzees, she says she has seen the destruction of forests across Africa: “And I’ve seen the decrease in chimpanzee numbers.
“If we don’t get together and impose tough regulations on what people are able to do to the environment – if we don’t rapidly move away from fossil fuel, if we don’t put a stop to industrial farming, that’s destroying the environment and killing the soil, having a devastating effect on biodiversity – the future ultimately is doomed.”
Dr Goodall’s career has often been challenging. She has written about the early years of her work for Professor Leakey, who was a renowned scientist, and who had enormous influence over her career. He repeatedly declared his love for her, putting pressure on her in a way that, today, might be viewed as sexual harassment.
But she spurned his advances and kept her focus on her work and her beloved chimpanzees. Now, having turned 90 this year, she does not appear to be slowing down.
So what keeps Dr Goodall going? On this she is emphatic – charmingly affronted by the question: “Surely people want a future for their children. If they do, we have to get tougher about [environmental] legislation.
“We don’t have much time left to start helping the environment. We’ve done so much to destroy it.”
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