The life ofJane Goodall

Jane Goodall and her mother started their new lives in Africa on July 14, 1960. They arrived on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika in Gombe National Park. A group of men met them and carried their luggage. They didn’t have very much: a tent, a few clothes, and a cup. Later the same day, somebody said they had seen a chimpanzee. Right away, Jane started running toward the forest, where she saw a chimpanzee for the first time.

Jane had always dreamed of visiting Africa and studying chimpanzees, but she didn’t know much about them and she had no scientific qualifications. However, after she arrived in Gombe, she spent many months watching groups of these animals and learning about them. She started to write about them in her diary, and after many months of difficult work, she made three important and new discoveries: Chimpanzees ate meat; they used tools to get food; and they made tools of their own.

Jane began to publish articles in journals such as National Geographic magazine. After a while, scientists started reading her articles, and she was invited to study at a university. Finally, in 1966, she became Doctor Jane Goodall. Her work also made her famous. There was a film documentary called Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees (1965), and then the fi rst of many books, My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzees (1967).

During the seventies, there was a war in the region, and Gombe became a dangerous place. Many foreigners left, but Jane stayed. Eventually the war ended, but there was another problem at the start of the 1980s.

As the human population increased in Gombe, more trees were cut down. With fewer trees, the chimpanzees lost their natural habitat, and it became difficult for them to survive. By the end of the decade, only about a hundred chimpanzees were living in Gombe. At this time, Jane started working with local people to grow more trees in the region.

After 1989, Jane left Gombe and started traveling to other parts of the world. She gave lectures about her work, and she organized safe places for young chimps whose parents had died or been killed.

Now in her eighties, she spends about three hundred days a year giving interviews and lectures, meeting with government officials about animal conservation, and raising money for the Jane Goodall Institute—which continues her research. And she still spends part of every year in the forest in Gombe, watching her chimpanzees