Ape Expert Goodall Comes to L.A. to Plant Environmental Seeds

Jane Goodall, the internationally known researcher in chimpanzee behavior who devotes much of her time to educating youths around the world about environmental matters, was in her element Monday.

Behind her, dozens of playful apes climbed and swung inside a revamped Los Angeles Zoo chimpanzee penthouse.

Before her, about 75 elementary school students cheered the 64-year-old English ethologist with the energy more commonly reserved for a rock star.

On a sunny morning, Goodall, on one of her rare visits to Los Angeles, unveiled a local version of her “Roots and Shoots” program.

An international environmental and humanitarian curriculum, Roots and Shoots is administered by the Jane Goodall Institute. She started the program seven years ago as a simple gathering of children in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania--Los Angeles’ sister city.

Roots and Shoots programs, since formed by schools and youth organizations in 38 states and 30 countries, promote awareness of endangered species, slower population growth and responsible use of Earth’s resources.

“There’s a spirit moving around the world,” Goodall said as she moved through the zoo, surrounded by children and adults begging for autographs. “People are getting tired of the greedy society.”

The spirit seemed alive Monday in Southern California.

“Animals are getting killed . . . we should be more careful about it,” said Jenna Driscoll, 10, a fifth-grader from Poinsettia School in Ventura.

“This was a chance to meet her,” she said after getting a book autographed. “Now I have the memory locked in my mind.”

During a series of talks at the zoo, Goodall answered questions from children and adults, ranging from what sparked her interest in chimps to whether the creatures have feelings.

As a young girl, Goodall said Monday, she watched an episode of Tarzan and fell in love with the jungle, the animals and Tarzan himself.

“I thought Jane was a wimp,” she said to a laughing crowd. “I thought I could make a better mate.”

When she was old enough, she got a job as a waitress and began saving her earnings so she could visit Africa, which she eventually did.

Goodall earned a doctorate from Cambridge University. Her formal research on animal behavior--particularly that of chimpanzees--started in 1960 in what is now Gombe Stream National Park in northwestern Tanzania.

Before her research, scientists believed that chimpanzees ate mainly fruits and vegetables and occasionally insects and small rodents.

Through close contact over the years, Goodall discovered they also hunt and eat larger animals, such as young monkeys and pigs. They make and use tools more than any other animals, aside from humans, and have a complex system of communication.

Monday she explained how chimpanzee gestures and sounds express anger, joy and other emotions. With her own screams, she demonstrated the chimp greeting.

Goodall interrupted her humorous demonstrations of ape behavior with heartfelt speeches about deforestation and overpopulation around the world, and about the slaughter of endangered and other animals in Africa.

“They are being hunted for food and for the live trade,” she said.

Many adult female chimps are killed and their babies stolen to be sold, she added.

Attitudes toward animals have changed for the better in her nearly four decades of work with chimpanzees, she said, but much remains to be done, not only in the treatment of animals, but also in educating people around the globe on how to take care of the earth’s resources.

“We need to empower people, especially the women,” she said, noting that historically the better educated women become, the fewer children they bear.