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The Life, Work, and Wisdom of Dr. Jane Goodall

1.  Dr. Jane Goodall, the internationally known scientist who broke new ground in 1960 when she lived among Chimpanzees in East Africa in what is now known as Gombe Stream National Park, has written a new book: "The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times."  She recounts that by the 1980s, chimpanzee numbers had dropped everywhere across their range in six African countries, and their forests were being destroyed.  They were caught in snares to be sold for bushmeat (commercial hunting of animals for food) and exposed to human diseases.  Mothers were shot so their infants could be taken and sold as pets or to zoos, or trained for the circus, or used for medical research.  By 1990 the great equatorial forest belt that stretched across Africa had become a tiny oasis of forest surrounded by bare hills that had been cleared for growing human populations struggling to grow food and make charcoal.  In subsequently creating her Jane Goodall Institute, which sought to address what she considered the two most pressing problems, climate change and biodiversity loss (extinction of plants and nonhuman species), she asks us to recognize the consequences of our actions and to think of the well-being of the whole, not just of ourselves.


2.  Visiting the six African countries in 1987 where she had done ground-breaking work among the chimpanzee population in the 1960s, Dr. Jane Goodall found a much larger, more impoverished human population struggling to live on land that could no longer support them.  Realizing that trying to save the dwindling numbers of chimpanzees and the ravaged rain forest meant helping people find a way of making a living without destroying the environment, Jane Goodall began Tacare, working with local Tanzanians and local government officials to grow more food sustainably and have better clinics and schools to educate girls.  She also set up microcredit banks that gave small loans to mainly women who wanted to start a small business.  Tacare is now in 104 villages throughout the chimpanzee's range, and the chimpanzees and their forests, along with other wildlife, are being protected by the people who live there. 


3.  "Our efforts to protect endangered species preserve biodiversity on the Earth--and when we protect all life, we inherently protect our own," writes Dr. Jane Goodall in "The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times."  Yet a 2019 study published by the United Nations reports that species are going extinct tens to hundreds of times faster than would be natural and that a million species of animals and plants could become extinct in the next few decades as a result of human activity.   While humans and their livestock and their pets far outnumber all other animal life, we've already wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles.  "With so many people on the planet, we must set some areas aside for wildlife, which is really beginning to work," writes Jane Goodall, adding, "if we don't act wisely now to slow down the heating of the planet and the loss of plant and animal life, it may be too late."  Dr. Goodall finds that a "mixture of greed, hate, fear, and desire for power" has inflicted harm on "this poor old planet," but that we can change things with innovative solutions, including renewable energy, regenerative farming and permaculture, and many other new ways of doing things.  

 

 

4.  The Jane Goodall Institute, in addressing the intergenerational injustice she feels we are committing against today's youth as we destroy nature and threaten the planet, has also created Roots and Shoots, a program that empowers hundreds of thousands of young people across 68 countries to be better planetary stewards than the generations that came before them.  Young people are asked to take on projects that make the world a better place for people, animals, and the environment.  The two great threats of climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity(extinction of plants and nonhuman species) must be solved, says Dr. Jane Goodall, "for if we cannot solve these threats, then it will be the end of life on Earth as we know it, including our own.  We cannot live on if the natural world dies....Yes, we can, and we will - for we must.  Let us use the gift of our lives to make a better world."

 

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Laura Raedeke

EcoFaith Network NE MN Team
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, MN

Northeastern Minnesota Synod

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