Keeping Hope Alive

Jane Goodall isn't slowing down in her mission to raise awareness about the planet's shrinking biodiversity

- Emma Gilchrist

WHEN WORLD-RENOWNED naturalist Jane Goodall visited Victoria, Canada, in 2022, she had an air of serenity. The octogenarian began to walk onstage in front of a sold-out crowd, leaning on an assistant's shoulder and using a cane. But then she abruptly hopped across the stage, lithe as can be-no cane necessary. "That was poor 88-year-old Jane Goodall," she quipped from the mic and not feel sort of despairing. 

The world’s best-known naturalist, now 89, isn’t slowing down for anyone or anything. When I caught up with her via Zoom a few months after her visit to Victoria, she was in Los Angeles, the latest stop in her relentless schedule to spread the message she learnt from observing chimpanzees in their natural habitat decades ago.

Even in a sprawling metropolis like L.A., she tries to find little pockets of nature. “If I go to a hotel and there’s one tree, I will sometimes move my bed around so I can just be there and see the tree,” she said. “A little bird comes on the palm tree outside the window. I like it.”

That message—that we are part of the animal kingdom and that we all have a part to play in saving our planet—is arguably more important now than ever.

You’ve said that hope is a survival skill that enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. Lately it has become almost fashionable to be cynical, to throw up our hands and say “It’s all hopeless.” Why do you think so many people seem to be giving up hope these days?