This Jane is the Tarzan of the wild

KOLKATA: She is a legend. However, mention that to her and pat comes her reply: ���But I am also real... I am me. When she arrived in Tanzania���s Gombe National Park in 1960, Jane Goodall was just in her mid-twenties, inspired by Tarzan and her intense love for animals and her passion for Africa.

She was presented a stuffed chimp called Jubilee by her father when she was 18 months old. ���But, this had nothing to do with my later journey into the wilds, Ms Goodall told ET in an exclusive interview. ���I saved up for the travel to Africa. It was Professor Lewis Leakey, the palaeontologist, who triggered this journey that finally created my destiny. This was in 1960,��� she said.

As her research into the behavioural mechanisms of primates progressed, she discovered and drove home how close chimpanzees were to humans. This silently revolutionised prevalent theories on primate behaviour. In 1977, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) crystallised in Arlington, Virginia.

But it was a Wildlife Congress in 1986 which brought about a radical transformation. ���I realised that chimps were vanishing. This turned me into an activist.���

The activist in Goodall translated into lecture tours, television programmes and films on wildlife conservation. In tandem, JGI fanned out across the world and spawned volunteer groups and youth programmes like ���Roots and Shoots��� in nearly 100 countries. Ms Goodall���s universe now spans preschoolers to the elderly and the old.

In the basket of projects that Ms Goodall was feverishly supporting was Take Care, an initiative to inspire the local community to manage and sustain the environment in the gameparks to essentially become self-sufficient. It includes measures like family planning, micro-credit, soil and water conservation, primary healthcare in villages around a forest reserve, like the one being carried out off Gombe.

Her backers include Pierce Brosnan, Whoopi Goldberg, Angelina Jolie, Emma Thomson, Candice Bergen, Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart, Cameroon Diaz and Justin Timberlake. Her other elitist friends include UN���s Kofi Annan (who appointed her as a UN messenger of peace) and former World Bank president John Wolfensohn.

While these connections could be acting in her favour, big-time corporate funding is still coming in trickles. ���We have only recently received an endowment of $8 million,��� she remarked. This is Goodall���s second visit to India and first stopover in Kolkata.

The iconic conservator, who was ���horrified��� while visiting the zoo in Kolkata, plans a chapter of the JGI in India. Interestingly, a dozen-odd Roots and Shoots groups are already active in India. ���We need support to grow our programme in India. And, it will be Indian money which will have go into wildlife conservation in this country,��� she stressed. She will travel to Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad.