Bill Moyers & Jane Goodall: What Chimps Reveal About Human Brutality, Violence, Compassion and Hope

The following is an adapted version of the transcript from Bill Moyers' recent interview with Jane Goodall from the most recent episode of the BIll Moyers Journal on PBS.

Bill Moyers:  When Jane Goodall walked into our building this week, faces lit up. Our security chief told me she does animal rescue work after hours because of Jane Goodall. Our stage manager whispered into my ear, "She's been my hero for decades." And the nine-year-old daughter of our editor hurried to the studio because she's writing a school book report on Jane Goodall. Is there anyone who doesn't know who Jane Goodall is?

This pioneering woman, acclaimed the world over, has spent much of her life negotiating an intense and intimate relationship with the chimpanzees of the Gombe National Park in East Africa. Her research produced landmark studies of chimpanzee life and society and how they relate to our own. And of course, there have been all those wonderful television specials for PBS and National Geographic. It's as if we all grew up with her and the chimps. ... In closing the gap between the animal world and us, Jane Goodall helped us understand more clearly our own past. She inspired us to a deeper appreciation of our responsibility to the planet. In the course of her career, she herself evolved, from a youthful enthusiast of animals, to an observer of primates, to scientist and global activist for all of life on earth.  ...

Her Jane Goodall Institute works for the worldwide protection of habitat. And her program "Roots and Shoots" is in 114 countries, teaching and training young people to create projects to improve and protect the environment. She travels more than 300 days a year, challenging audiences to see themselves as caretakers of the natural world. All is not yet lost, she says, and has a new book to prove it, written with Thane Maynard and Gail Hudson, entitled, "Hope for Animals and Their World." ...

[Jane Goodall,] the life you're living now is such a contrast between the life of the Jane Goodall we first met living virtually alone in the forest, in the company of chimpanzees, sitting for hours quietly taking notes, observing. And now, 300 days a year, you're on the road. You're speaking. You're lobbying. You're organizing. Why? What's driving you?

Goodall: It actually all began in 1986. You know, in 1986 in the beginning of the year, I was in a dream world. I was out there with these amazing chimpanzees. I was in the forests I dreamed about as a child. I was doing some writing and a little bit of teaching once a year. And then at this conference it brought together the people who were studying chimpanzees across Africa and a few who were working with captive chimps, non-invasively. It was in Chicago. And we were together for four days. And we had one session on conservation. And it was so shocking to see right across their range in Africa, forests were going, human populations growing, the beginning of the bush meat trade, the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, chimpanzees caught in snares, population plummeted from somewhere between one and two million at the turn of the last century to at that time about 400,000. So, I came out, well I couldn't go back to that old, beautiful wonderful life.

Moyers: My team and I were just looking the other day about that old great classic, National Geographic Special, which shows you meeting the chimps for the first time. Do you remember that?

Goodall: "Among the Wild Chimpanzees."

Moyers: Yes.

Goodall: That's still one of the best films. Hugo shot it, my first husband. I love that film. ...

Moyers: Were the animals not affected by the presence of a camera crew?

Goodall: Well, once they've got used to you, they seem to pay very little attention. It's something which has surprised visiting scientists, who felt that the chimps' behavior must be compromised by our presence. But they accept you. And they by and large ignore you.