It might have been just another stuffy, prestigious Washington dinner–the guest list in this case including such notables as Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, U.S. Sen. John Glenn and the daughter of former Vice President Henry Wallace, among high-ranking others.
What made the gathering different was that everyone in the immense banquet hall was making “oof-oof-oof unnnggghhhh” male-chimpanzee assertive-identity calls. And doing it in unison. These toffs and worthies were going “oof-oof-oof” for the same reason they were at the dinner: to honor famed wildlife naturalist Jane Goodall.
Vice President Al Gore had bestowed upon her this year’s National Geographic Society Hubbard Medal–a distinction accorded only 31 times in the past 90 years and previously given to North Pole explorer Robert E. Peary, South Pole explorer Roald Amundsen, aviator Charles Lindbergh and the three Apollo 11 astronauts.
Also, this marks Goodall’s 35th year as what she herself calls “the chimp lady,” for it was in summer 1960 that, as a young woman with no formal academic training, she trekked into the wilds of Africa and commenced to live among and study mankind’s closest relations.
So it was deemed fitting by National Geographic President Gilbert Grosvenor and other dinner hosts to welcome her with a mass male chimp hooting and grunting. “Not bad,” she said afterward, and Goodall’s certainly the expert.
Just before the dinner, the guests had gathered to view a film on Goodall’s continuing work in Africa. Before the film rolled, the lights were turned off, and the audience–in all that blackness–was treated to a succession of spooky jungle sounds. It was thought to be the introductory soundtrack of the film, but when the lights were turned up again it proved to be Goodall, showing off her talents at mimicry from a chair on the stage.
“I was terribly lucky to get the opportunity to work with our closest relatives and to have really what I can only describe as a gift for communication,” she said in an interview before the dinner. “I can communicate by writing books, and I can communicate with my talks, and I can communicate with the chimps. I’m sort of like their ambassador.”
She has even worked her magic on the Los Angeles Police Department. Some 200 of L.A.’s top cops were holding a seminar on community relations earlier this year when one of them heard that Goodall was in their city and on the spur of the moment invited her to come over and address the group.
“I had 10 minutes,” she said. “They weren’t expecting me. The deputy chief said they probably wouldn’t be very interested. So I said to them, if I were a female chimpanzee walking into a room of high-ranking males, it would be very foolish if I didn’t start with a submissive greeting–the pant grunt–which I proceeded to do, and I got every person’s attention.
“Then, in 10 minutes, I covered the whole lot: chimps, conservation, my `Roots and Shoots’ program, rural Africa, bringing `Roots and Shoots’ into the inner city and how every individual can make a difference. I got a standing ovation.”
`Roots and Shoots’ program
The “Roots and Shoots” program, part of her Jane Goodall Institute in Ridgefield, Conn., was begun in Africa as an effort to involve young people in environmentalism. After she and a delegation of children made an appearance at a United Nations environmental conference in 1993, the movement spread to the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Canada.
On another visit this year, Goodall spoke to a gathering of National Basketball Association players and team owners. One, Gordon Gund, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, promptly donated $30,000 to her program.
“He said he had never heard the environment discussed in quite this way before,” she said.
Though her blond hair has gone gray and she’s now into late middle age, Goodall uncannily seems much the same slender, pony-tailed, mere slip of a girl who captured the attention and affection of much of the world when she emerged from the wilds to start writing books and articles and doing TV documentaries on chimps in the 1960s. Certainly her spirit seems the same–impishly so at times.
“One thing people don’t realize about Jane is that she had a tremendous sense of humor,” said National Geographic photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols, who has long worked with her in Africa. “I recall some visitors discovering this when she offered them some local food. She gave them what the chimpanzees eat.”
Among other things, chimpanzees relish termites.
The challenge of Africa
Inspired by a love of living creatures that included a fondness for worms in childhood, Goodall long dreamed of going off to Africa–and one day, with the encouragement of her mother, she up and did it. She turned up on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in what is now Tanzania, East Africa, and ingratiated herself with famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, who helped her organize a field study of chimpanzees as a possible means of gaining insights into our Stone Age human ancestors.
As her work progressed and flourished, she became one of the world’s leading authorities on chimpanzee life, and in 1965 she returned to her native England to earn a doctoral degree at Cambridge University. Returning to Africa, she founded the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania, where her work continues.
“I’ve been lucky in Tanzania because there’s been no fighting,” she said. “It’s been politically stable.”
She has other chimp refuges in Africa, including Uganda–“one of the most promising places; they’re doing a super job”–but she sees the outlook for wildlife in Africa as grim.
“Very, very grim,” she said. “There’s fighting in so many countries. We had to give up a program in Sierra Leone. We had to get out of Zaire some time ago, and Angola some time ago. In Brundi, we’ve had one program more or less closed down, and we’re very concerned about the other–concerned for the people as well as the chimps.”
Goodall also travels widely on behalf of reforming the use of chimps in medical and other research, and has come to the U.S. twice this year to investigate medical testing on 200 chimps in New Mexico and 150 in New York.
“This is not just a chimp colony,” she said. “They’re 150 individuals, with their own life histories and their own personalities and their own needs.”
The author of four major books for adults and two for children, Goodall is preparing a series of chimpanzee and environmental books for small children, plus helping with the preparation a CD-ROM version of her “My Life With the Chimpanzees.”
Catching up with Jane
In December, National Geographic will air a TV special–“a what’s-happened-to-Jane-since-1960 sort of thing.”
Though she says she hasn’t stayed in one location for more than three weeks since 1986, Goodall maintains a home in Tanzania, and another on the south coast of England at Bournemouth where her mother lives. Her second husband, Derek Bryceson, died in 1980. Her first, wildlife photographer Hugo Van Lawyck, still works in Africa.
Their son, Hugo, better known to Goodall fans as “Grub,” is 28 now and about to open his own commercial fishing outfit in Tanzania.
“He’s very, very good on the sea,” she said. “He’s given me nightmares all through his childhood because he took this tiny boat way out–you know, where he shouldn’t have. It’s not really surprising, his becoming a fisherman, because he grew up on the lake shore and the seashore”
As for her other “children,” they’re doing fine too.
“Flo’s daughter Fifi is the matriarch” of the chimpanzee colony, Goodall said proudly. “She’s the most reproductively successful of any female we’ve ever had at Gombe.
“When Fifi was an adolescent, she seemed something like a nymphomaniac to me. She’s now got six offspring. If all the chimps were like her, they’d have a population problem like we do. She hasn’t had any losses, and all her kids are healthy. Her eldest son has just taken over as the top-ranking male.”
Speaking of rank, Goodall was selected this year to be honored with the title of commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth. Though for all her communications skills, it’s unlikely Goodall got Her Majesty into one of those pant grunts.
