Article on Jane Goodall's recently awarded PHD from the University of Toronto. The 'chimp lady' gets recognition for her long association with endangered species projects around the world (and in Canada).Dudlow
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2008/1...7413136-cp.html
Goodall receives U of T honours - TORONTO Tuesday November 18,2008 By Anne-Marie Tobin, THE CANADIAN PRESS - Jane Goodall has spent decades documenting the behaviour and plight of chimpanzees in Africa, but her new book coming out next year will optimistically shine a light on a variety of species given a new chance at survival. The renowned conservationist even has a few Canadian wildlife examples in the book, which is about animals that were on the brink of extinction. "The book is only about success," Goodall said in a telephone interview from Hanover, N.H., before heading to Toronto, where she was presented with an honorary doctorate Thursday by the University of Toronto. "There's too much gloom and doom, and it's really important for young people going out there to try and do something like this. To have in front of them the fact that yeah, you can do it. Even when people say it's hopeless, you can still do it." Among the creatures highlighted in the book, due out in September, is the Vancouver Island marmot, which had almost disappeared. "Its habitat was kind of interfered with by logging, and this one man, Andrew Bryant, was doing his PhD and he managed to involve the logging companies, who changed some of their practices to help the marmot, and he started a captive breeding program," Goodall explained. "And now the numbers are - golly, I can't tell you off the top of my head - but they're way up." Another example is the whooping crane that flies back and forth between Texas and Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta. "They had to do a big awareness campaign on the migration trail where people were shooting them because they said (the birds) were damaging their fields," she said. Although Goodall isn't doing chimpanzee research any more, she does get back to the forest twice a year to spend time in her old stomping grounds in Tanzania. "Only a couple of days, but that's better than nothing," she said. "There's a lot of fundraising to do, and the chimps' habitat is vanishing so we're working with the people living around the national park and improving their lives in many many ways so they're now our partners, and they're helping to conserve the last forests." She's also focused on trying to eliminate the illegal and increasingly commercialized trade in bushmeat, which threatens the survival of chimps and other animals in Africa. "It's being made possible by the foreign logging companies going in and opening up the last remaining forests with roads. Hunters can now go deep into the forest where they couldn't get before," she said. "Most of that meat is sold in the markets in the cities in the country where it was killed, the bulk of it, where the urban elite will pay more for bushmeat, as they call it, than for chicken or goats." The Jane Goodall Institute says that the populations of humans' four "closest relatives" - bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - have dropped by more than 80 per cent in the last 50 years. But Goodall said her main focus now is raising awareness and developing a youth program called Roots and Shoots, which is in 100 countries. The education program aims to foster respect and compassion for living things, and inspire young people to improve their communities by working on projects to help people, animals and the environment. The economic downturn will have an impact on fundraising, she said, and "we're going to have to be imaginative and have some slightly different ways of raising money." "I don't normally like thinking about my birthday but next year I'll be 75, so we're making a campaign around my birthday. So for all our Roots and Shoots - we've got about 9,000 around the world - you know, can each child contribute 75 cents or pennies or whatever currency it happens to be, and maybe they can contribute $7.50 or maybe their parents can do $750. You know, play on that 75." And will she have a party to mark the day - April 3? "I shall have to, shan't I?" she said, the gravitas replaced by a playful lilt in her voice. "Everybody can have a final party on my birthday to raise the last bits of money."
thanks bill