Goodall issues call to protect environment

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By MELISSA LEE / Lincoln Journal Star

CRETE — Smart decision by Doane College President Jonathan Brand to spend his free time this week picking up stray trash.

Jane Goodall, it turns out, would’ve been less than pleased to find an empty pop can lying around.

The world’s best-known chimpanzee expert is also an avid environmentalist, a fact she made clear after receiving an honorary doctoral degree from Doane Wednesday afternoon.

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Jane Goodall (AP)

Jane Goodall (AP)

She used her 90 minutes at the podium not only to deliver a traditional campus message — young people can change the world — but  to urge an end to pollution, commercialism and harm to animals ... yes, especially chimps.

“How on earth is it that we’re destroying the planet?” she asked a packed Fuhrer Field House. “It’s our home.”

Human activity has destroyed animals’ natural habitats and hastened global warming, she said, and people must work to slow their energy consumption before the effects are irreversible.

“Is there a reason for hope?” she asked, quoting her book title. “My answer is yes.”

Goodall, 72, is most famous for her lifelong study of the social behavior of chimpanzees, which, she discovered, closely resembles that of humans. Her work, done mostly from the jungles of Africa, made her one of the world’s premier female scientists.

She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in Africa three decades ago to help conservation efforts across the continent. She also helped create the Roots & Shoots program, an environmentalist education group with branches in 90 countries.

She’s received the Kyoto Prize from Japan, the Legion of Honor from France and numerous awards for peace activism.

How’d Doane snag her? She’s good friends with an alum and also comes to Nebraska regularly to see the sandhill cranes migration, Brand said.

Her visit caused “quite a buzz” on campus, he added.

Goodall didn’t disappoint in the humor department. Accepting her degree, she joked, “If I was a chimpanzee, I’d be very excited right now,” followed by a dead-on impression of a happy chimp.

Several children held up stuffed monkeys in glee.

Her first real scientific observation came in the 1930s when, as a child, she hid in her family’s hen cage all day to see where eggs came from, she recalled.

She also made her friends believe she could understand dogs and squirrels.

Games aside, her love of animals has been lifelong, she said.

Some professors initially discouraged her research, saying a woman shouldn’t study in the jungle and that her assertions that animals have personalities were off-target.

She believes time — and science — have proved her doubters wrong.

Just one childhood dream failed to come true.

“Sadly,” she said, “Tarzan married another Jane.”

Reach Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.