Sun, Apr 02, 2006 - Page 18 News List

Jane Goodall walks on the wild and dark side

In her latest book `Harvest for Hope,' the phenomenally influential researcher looks at the production of food and its impact on the environment

DPA , JOHANNESBURG

In her latest book, Harvest for Hope, in which Goodall looks at the consumption and production of food and its impact on the environment, she devotes an entire chapter to children and nutrition.

The rise of superbugs as a result of resistance to antibiotics, conditions at abattoirs and the destruction of land with the estab-lishment of cities in countries like China are also covered in Goodall's book.

These days human disregard for the environment takes her increasingly to places like Japan, China and India in her bid to fulfil her goal of preventing further harm to the natural world.

Goodall told how she has personally witnessed chained elephants "swaying from side to side on concrete" and young chimps being "offered for sale next to the cut up bodies of their mothers."

But in the face of all of this, she has hope, she said. "My reasons are very simplistic. They are not based on science. They are naive."

The lecture returned to a subject that makes her face light up -- chimpanzees. "They are capable of extreme brutality and violence.

"They do have a dark side," she explained.

But, according to Goodall, what sets this animal and humans apart was the latter had an imaginative brain.

"If we have the will with these brains, there are solutions," she said, adding that people the world over were beginning to understand that needless destruction for the sake of civilization could not continue.

"Injustices and dangers on the planet today have created a new kind of business person. One who is successful and wants to put something back," she concluded.

Ever since an American businessman provided the funds she needed to spend her first six months in Gombe, "business has been tremendously helpful in all the things I do," she also noted.

Goodall said she travels to Gombe twice a year for a just a few days at a time. She is no longer a familiar face to the chimpanzees that inhabit the area, she explained. "Most of the chimps I knew very well are not there any more".

But her brief visits are very much about "being alone" in the forest, she said, adding: "Any wilderness is good. Any wilderness is good."

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