Dr. Jane Goodall returns to Aspen, sends message of hope to youth

As the natural world continues to lose its battle against humankind, Dr. Jane Goodall remains hopeful about the future. The source of this hope comes, in part, from the hundreds of young eyes looking back at her, a generation still learning how important it is for humans to co-exist with nature.

“That’s why I have so much hope in the young people,” Goodall said Monday from Aspen. “Once they start to understand the problems and we empower them to take action and we give them a voice, we give them a choice. They can choose what they are passionate about.”

Goodall, the famed ethologist, conservationist, and activist, made her return to the Roaring Fork Valley after a 20-year hiatus as part of a community youth lecture put on by the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. Despite her age, Goodall, 89, energetically talked for more than an hour on Monday inside the Harris Concert Hall to a capacity crowd of about 500 people.

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Geared toward the children in attendance, who were given priority to listen to Goodall talk in person, she opened her discussion by saying hello in her native tongue — chimpanzee, naturally — and about how her love for reading helped develop her curiosity from an early age.

One of the first books she read was the 1914 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes,” a story that doesn’t always sit well with Goodall as Tarzan “married the wrong Jane.”

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Making introductions Monday was ACES CEO Chris Lane.

“She braved those unknowns to give us a window into humankind’s closest living relatives,” Lane said. “By inspiring people to conserve the natural world we all share, Dr. Goodall shows us that everything — everything — is connected, and everyone can make a difference. Ultimately, that’s why we are all here tonight.”

Goodall’s story is well known. Born in London in 1934, she gave a lot of credit to her mother for helping stimulate her natural curiosity for wildlife and nature. She had the desire to travel the world and learn about animals, but she lived in a time where “girls simply didn’t do that sort of thing.”

Her life changed in 1960, when she found her way to Tanzania with the help of famed anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey, who hired Goodall to be his secretary and sent her to study Africa’s chimpanzees. In was in 1960 that Goodall made a discovery that rocked the world, learning that chimps could use tools — in this case a blade of grass as a utensil to fish out ants. Prior to this, it was believed humans were the only creatures on the planet that could make and use tools.

This fame from her work eventually led Goodall to create the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and she has since traveled the world sharing her story to inspire others to help save the natural world.

“I think of this as like a beautiful tapestry, a living tapestry,” Goodall said. “Every time an animal species or a plant species disappears from that particular ecosystem, it’s a thread pulled from the tapestry.”

During her talk, Goodall pointed out how she went from being a scientist to an activist over the decades. A lot of this stemmed from her seeing first-hand the negative impact mankind was having on the natural ecosystem, largely from deforestation.

“By the late 1980s, when I flew over in a small plane, I was horrified to see a little island of forest,” Goodall said, referring to Tanzania’s tiny Gombe Stream National Park, where she conducted much of her groundbreaking research in the 1960s. “They were cutting down the trees in order to make more land for food, or to make money from … (timber). Too poor to buy food from elsewhere.”

Instances like these made Goodall realize that helping humans also meant helping animals, and she’s long been at the forefront for helping citizens of poor countries develop farming, education and health infrastructure that works in tandem with nature and wildlife.

And it’s this fight she hopes the youth of the world can pick up in her stead. When addressing the question of a child in the Aspen audience on Monday, she was honest in saying that one person picking up a single piece of trash probably won’t make any difference. But if that same person asked 10 other friends to pick up trash, and each of those 10 brought in 10 more people, suddenly the impact being made is substantial.

It’s a lesson Goodall promotes regularly on her world travels — she’s hardly slowed down — and is at the root of her “Roots & Shoots” organization she started with a dozen high school students in 1991, which is meant to “empower young people to affect positive change in their communities.”

“The answer is, you cannot save the world (alone), but you can do something in your own community. What do you care about?” Goodall said. “It’s the collective impact of small choices that can make a big change.”

Goodall is also scheduled to speak Tuesday at both Roaring Fork and Glenwood Springs high schools, with attendance prioritized for students and youth.

acolbert@aspentimes.com