Jane Goodall (1934-present) - primatologist | anthropologist | conservationist
Simon Fraser University - Communications & Marketing, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jane Goodall is a British primatologist, author, environmentalist, and the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees. She has studied chimpanzees for 60 years in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She established the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 to support the research in Gombe and help protect chimpanzees and their habitats through community-focused conservation and development. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots, has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries. Goodall founded the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre in the Republic of Congo in 1992. A UN Messenger of Peace, Goodall is an international speaker and environmental activist.
Quotes
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
“Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.”
Books
Goodall, J. (2003). Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.
Goodall, J. (1990) Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe.
Peterson, D. (2006). Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man.
Arzie Umali - Artist Statement
I have been infatuated with chimpanzees and monkeys for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s because I was born during the Year of the Monkey. In art school, I started painting chimpanzees because I once heard the artist Deborah Butterfield say during a lecture, that the reason she created sculptures of horses is because she loved them. I loved chimps; ergo, I would paint them.
My infatuation with Jane Goodall runs parallel to my love of chimps. Of course, she’s the chimp researcher who blazed a trail for female scientists and redefined what differentiated chimpanzees from human beings. But she is also a humanitarian, an animal rights activist, and climate activist. And now, well into her 80s, she continues to travel the world spreading her message of hope as an activist for animals, our planet, and humanity.
Not everyone gets to meet their hero, but in the late 1990s, I met Jane during a book signing in Kansas City. I gifted her with one of my sketch books filled with drawings of chimpanzees. This photo is from that meeting.
In February 2022, Jane Goodall released the following statement about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
This artwork is dedicated to my Ukrainian family in New Jersey and those still in Ukraine determined to stay and fight for their homeland. More at arzie.com
"Hope: Ode to Jane"