Television
Jane Goodall revisits chimps in 'Return to Gombe'

By Luaine Lee
Knight Ridder Newspapers

	JEAN-MARC BOUJU / AP, 1997 Noted primatologist Jane Goodall, seen here with a 5- or 6-year-old female chimpanzee at a Kenyan sanctuary in 1997, returns to her chimp reserve in Gombe, Tanzania, for an Animal Planet special.
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"I'd heard about him and called up. I'd saved up by being a waitress to get there. I hadn't been to university. I said, I (was) staying with a friend, had a temporary job and I really wanted to work with animals, and could he help me?

"He gave me a job instantly as his assistant," Goodall says.

Since then, her research on chimpanzees has changed our preconceptions about our closest relatives and elevated Goodall into the pantheon of celebrated scientists.

On TV "Jane Goodall's Return to Gombe," 8 p.m. Monday on Animal Planet.

Though she spends most of her time traveling and lecturing on peace and environmental conservation, she returns to Tanzania and her chimp reserve in Gombe periodically. The surprises from her latest visit are chronicled in the Animal Planet special "Jane Goodall's Return to Gombe," at 8 p.m. Monday.

The primatologist says she fell in love with animals as a girl from reading "Dr. Doolittle," "Tarzan" and "Call of the Wild." But it was another book that ignited her passion for learning.

"The book (was) dense, with photographs, called 'The Miracle of Life.' It was not for children. It went into the history of medicine and the discovery of anesthetics, and I can still see the pictures. I loved it.

"I really was a naturalist from the time I was born," she says.

After her first book, "The Chimpanzees of Gombe," was published, Leakey pushed to have her awarded a doctorate.

Though she's constantly campaigning for orphan chimp sanctuaries, for conservation and replenishment of 33 African villages, for more primate research and for better environmental education, it's not the chimpanzees that absorb her now.

"It isn't apes that I want to go and see," she says. "I've seen so many, I've seen gorillas and one wild male orangutan. It's probably to spend time with wolves. I suppose from reading Jack London — I always said if I didn't go to Africa I would go to Canada."

Goodall's next special on the Animal Planet, "Jane Goodall's State of the Great Ape," premieres June 12.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company