Jane Goodall: Spreading Hope is her bailiwick. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
On an April day in 1934 a new mother was discharged from a London maternity home, along with her baby girl. Deeming her husband’s Aston Martin race- car too dangerous to transport their firstborn, she enlisted the help of a friend, the owner of a more sedate vehicle. It was my grandfather, Denis Robinson, who conveyed them safely home that day, an act emblematic of their friendship. But no one could have predicted that the baby clasped so carefully in her mother’s arms in Grandpa’s back seat, Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, would grow up to be one of the world’s most famous conservationists.
Jane Goodall skyrocketed to fame at 29 in the August 1963 issue of National Geographic, captivating readers with her feature article, “My Life Among Wild Chimpanzees.” I was only a few years old at the time, but as a teenager I oc- casionally accompanied my grandfather to functions honoring “Dr. Jane,” and like many women in my Baby Boomer generation, I idolized the courageous young British scientist living in the African bush. Later, after my grandfather died, I spent several years working as the African Adventures Specialist for the Jane Goodall Institute. It was a conversation with Dr. Jane, at one of several 80th birthday parties held in her honor several years ago, that planted the seed for my book, Saving Wild: Inspiration From 50 Leading Conservationists.
According to scientists, we are entering the sixth great mass extinction event, witnessing, as Jon Mooallem writes, “a planet hemorrhaging living things so fast that half of its nine million species could be gone by the end of the century.”
Changing our current environmental course is considered the greatest challenge of our time. Although the window of opportunity to halt, and hopefully reverse, the loss is closing, we can do it. Yet, it’s easy to feel a sense of ecological despair, to lose hope, and to give up trying to make a difference.
Jane Goodall: Spreading Hope
It was in this pessimistic frame of mind that I arrived at Dr. Jane’s birthday party.
After listening to Jane give an eloquent fundraising speech, I sought her out. “How do you keep going?” I asked. “How do you stay inspired?”
A woman of consistent action and no excuses, even in her ninth decade, Dr. Jane anchored her gold-flecked eyes on mine and replied, “We can’t quit. We have to keep working.”
All over the world, hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are doing just that: working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, to conserve already threatened species, to assuage the pressures from over-exploitation and climate change. But I couldn’t help wondering if, like me, these people, ever get mired in the doubt and seeming impossibility of it all. And if so, how do they persevere? What is their antidote to ecological despair? Were they, like Dr. Jane, born with an unusual amount of determination, or an exceptional ability to ignore the negative? Do they possess traits that can be learned or copied?
I decided to find out.
I sought out fifty of the world’s leading conservationists, men and women who have devoted their lives to saving some of the most endangered species and the most threatened areas on earth. Among the people I contacted were wildlife film- makers Beverly and Dereck Joubert, elephant experts Daphne Sheldrick, Cynthia Moss and Joyce Poole, and ocean warrior Paul Watson. I spoke with Boyd Varty, who was raised in the African bush, with Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, former CEO of Patagonia, and with Laura Turner, daughter of one of America’s most prominent conservationists. To each, I posed the question I had asked Jane: How do you stay inspired?
The answers I received are more personal, heartfelt, and inspiring than I could have imagined. Not only optimism, but a contagious determination permeates the responses.
That is the gift of the people in my book, Saving Wild. Their determination lifts and holds me up, motivating me to keep trying. It’s my hope that their enthusiasm and dedication will inspire each one of us to work harder at saving the wildlife and wild places that connect us all. And then let’s take Jane’s advice: “Don’t give up.”
Saving Wild, with a foreword from Jane Goodall is a great Holiday gift for anyone who loves animals and could use a little hope.