Souperwoman: Jane Goodall Fights For the Sharks

When we hear the name Jane Goodall, we picture a gentle, silver-haired lady charming the chimpanzees. But if you were to start thinking of her as a champion of sharks – a crusader against the brutal finning that leaves those fierce creatures broken and rudderless – Goodall would hardly mind. The lauded anthropologist and ethologist has spent a significant portion of her career as a broader ecological activist, with start-ups like the Roots & Shoots worldwide conservationist youth group. Below, she tells the Beijinger what brought on that change, and how she hopes to help sink shark finning with appearances this month at the Hilton Beijing and at the Beijing Roots & Shoots Summit.

How does the world’s most famous primatologist get involved in an anti-shark-finning campaign?
Because it is an unchecked, unsustainable practice. More than 30 Roots & Shoots groups managed by our Beijing office are making efforts to raise awareness and reduce consumption by collecting pledges from the public through the No Shark Fin Project. It was for this kind of reason that I started Roots & Shoots, our global youth environmental program, years ago. I realized I had to leave my dream life of working with chimpanzees, and now I tell young people all around the world why it is important for them to protect the environment.

Detractors say anti-shark-finning campaigns like yours threaten fishermen’s livelihoods.
Our TACARE program in Africa works with communities where chimpanzees are poached for livelihoods. We have trained and hired ex-poachers to be park rangers. This model works because they know exactly where the poachers are and can effectively stop them. For the shark fin industry, we can help these people find more sustainable ways of earning a living that can help the environment, not destroy it.

How will you get that message across during your Beijing speaking engagements?
I will discuss the importance of young people in the conservation efforts we must all undertake to make this a better planet for all living things. Time is running out and the crossroads are ahead of us, but if we can get a critical mass of youth to realize that there is more to life than material belongings, then we will start healing the planet in time. You had that realization yourself at an early age. You had a toy, a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, about whom you’ve said: “My mother’s friends were horrified … thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares.”

How did Jubilee help you realize you were an animal lover?
Jubilee was my first encounter with a primate, but I didn’t find him scary because I could see resemblances to the people I knew as my family and friends. That was when I was 11 years old, and that was when I decided I was going to go to Africa when I grew up and live with animals, and write books about them. Not surprisingly, everybody laughed at me, not only because it was during World War II and Africa at the time was still thought of as a place of pumas and poisoned arrows, but also because I was the wrong sex. The one person who never laughed at me was my mother.

The “Evening With Jane Goodall” gala dinner will be held at the Hilton Beijing on Nov 3. Tickets are RMB 1,000 and can be purchased at The Bookworm (Sanlitun and Shunyi branches), ICVS Wangjing, Hilton Beijing, and the Roots & Shoots office. Goodall will also appear at the Roots and Shoots China Summit on Nov 4. For more info, visit www.genyuya.org.

Click here to see the November issue of the Beijinger in full.