Being Green - 10 August 2018
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Out of many remarkable and stand-out women in natural history and the environment movement I’m arbitrarily focusing on a few today, just to bring them to mind and acknowledge their amazing achievements, against all the usual odds, plus the dimension of gender discrimination.
Jane Goodall, primatologist, anthropologist, activist and so much more. She made her breakthrough by single-mindedness and sheer determination, eventually persuading palaeontologist Louis Leakey to take her on as a secretary and go-fer. She had no particular education, but through the inspired encouragement of Leakey, became one of the acknowledged observers of primate behaviour and a campaigner for conservation and attitudes to the wild. She studied chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, and challenged contemporary science views that only mankind is capable of tool-making. She also established that chimpanzees are not exclusively vegetarians, but also hunters and meat-eaters. Some of her research methods were controversial and criticized by the purists, but she was – is - a dedicated campaigner for wider appreciation of the wild. She also discovered a dark side of chimpanzee behavior – aggression and violence. Which makes them even closer to us in terms of social similarities.
I personally can never forget her electrifying presentation and immense impact as a motivational speaker. Dame Jane Goodall, heaped with deserved honours, still thankfully with us and very much alive.
Jane Goodall, primatologist, anthropologist, activist and so much more. She made her breakthrough by single-mindedness and sheer determination, eventually persuading palaeontologist Louis Leakey to take her on as a secretary and go-fer. She had no particular education, but through the inspired encouragement of Leakey, became one of the acknowledged observers of primate behaviour and a campaigner for conservation and attitudes to the wild. She studied chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, and challenged contemporary science views that only mankind is capable of tool-making. She also established that chimpanzees are not exclusively vegetarians, but also hunters and meat-eaters. Some of her research methods were controversial and criticized by the purists, but she was – is - a dedicated campaigner for wider appreciation of the wild. She also discovered a dark side of chimpanzee behavior – aggression and violence. Which makes them even closer to us in terms of social similarities.
I personally can never forget her electrifying presentation and immense impact as a motivational speaker. Dame Jane Goodall, heaped with deserved honours, still thankfully with us and very much alive.
