More typically pictured with chimpanzees, Jane Goodall meets a koala at Adelaide Zoo. Australia fares particularly poorly for endangered species, but even for those on the brink, it's not too late, she says.
Credit: Australian Science Media Centre
It’s pretty clear to me that the world is in a grim state. I spend my life travelling around the globe, 300 days a year, around Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia.
And everywhere the picture is the same. Everywhere human populations are growing, and everywhere there is materialistic greed operating.
I find that people have lost the wisdom of the indigenous people and are making decisions based not on how they will impact people in the future, but on how they impact themselves and their families now, the next shareholders meeting, the next political campaign and so forth.
As I'm travelling, I'm constantly faced with the loss of biodiversity. So I hate to say that the new IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (see, A third of mammals doomed, says Red List, Cosmos Online) is not a surprise. It’s pretty obvious travelling around that things aren’t going right.
Extraordinary journey
It’s very good to have this list coming up every so often so that we can see that we aren’t doing enough.
Those of us who care have to do more. If there wasn’t a list like this, then maybe we would have done less, because sometimes you see an animal appear, that wasn’t there before, and you think, "oh my goodness, I really can’t let this happen".
I’m working on a book at the moment. It’s about animals and plants rescued from the very brink of extinction. This has taken me on an extraordinary journey,a journey around the world meeting the most amazing people who have just got incredible commitment and will not let this or that species become extinct.
These are people who have been laughed at. They are people who have been told that if a species is reduced to one male and one female then there is no way you can save it – and yet they have not given up, and they have been proven right.
Back from the brink
They have managed to save some of these species that were literally on the very, very, brink of extinction, almost ready to tumble over to join the dodo. There are quite a lot of examples from New Zealand and Australia (see, Tasmanian devil epidemic: cause isolated?, Cosmos Online).
I have had the privilege of meeting some of these people. I’ve seen some of the animals that have been or are being rescued, and I think it’s this feeling of hope and optimism that we have to carry with us in the light of the new 2008 Red List.
Yes it’s grim. But in a way the grimmer it gets – the closer human beings have their backs to the wall – the harder they seem to want to fight.
We are getting to the point of no return with so many species and that is making many people just determined to fight harder. There are interest groups, passionate interest groups, that aren’t even among scientists, that take up the cause for some creature or some plant that’s endangered.
The Jane Goodall Institute, which I founded, has a program for young people called 'Roots and Shoots'. The roots that make the firm foundations, the shoots reach up through brick walls towards the Sun. We think of the brick walls as all the problems we have inflicted on this planet and so it’s a message of hope.
Call to action
Hundreds and thousands of young people around the globe can make this a better world. These young people are taking on this issue of the loss of biodiversity. They are very passionate about the animals with whom we share this planet.
I think it’s their passion, their enthusiasm, their commitment, their sheer exuberant energy, and their conviction that they are going to make a difference – that’s what really gives me the inspiration and the energy to carry on doing what I’m doing.
So yes this year's Red Data List is grim, but it's also a call to action. And so many of these amazing animals are just hovering there. But I have the proof from my research that even when it seems hopeless, given the right political will, the right dedication, the right energy, it can be reversed.
And this is what I must cling to. This is what we must share with our children. That it is never too late, that we must never give up. We must always continue to fight, knowing that we can win.
Jane Goodall is one of the world’s best known primatologists, a roving ambassador for the Amphibian Ark 2008 Year of the Frog and the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute. She spent 45 years studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania.
More information
This is an edited extract of a talk Jane Goodall gave for the Australian Science Media Centre at Adelaide Zoo on 7 October 2008.
political will
political will is determined by the will of the people ... and so many people lack the conviction to force governments to act. if the global financial crisis has any silver lining, let it be that people stop trying to live beyond their means, stop buying for the sake of buying, stop wanting, stop ignoring the world they live in. My family is young, but they know more about climate change and species extinction and how the hand of humans is irrevocably altering the world in which they will have to live as adults than most of the adults i know. I will keep banging on about our precarious place in the history of planet earth in the hopes that people will start to hear. for my children, for their children, for our childrens' children.
bless you jane, your heart must break often as you see millions of years of evolution that brought us the bounty of species worldwide, brought to its knees in just decades. People are listening, and hearing, and changing in response, but it is my childrens generation who will be heard the loudest as they demand change, create change, and force change.
thank you from the bottom of my heart, for your lifetime of gentle expression on behalf of the species that would not be heard without you.
seriously susan