Professor Michael Wilson (right) with Jane Goodall (center) and Jumanne Kikwale in 2016.
Jane Goodall inspired and influenced many over a lifetime of research and advocacy, including former and current faculty at the University of Minnesota. Michael Wilson, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior is one of several College of Biological Sciences faculty members with a longtime connection to Goodall. A principal investigator with the Gombe Research Consortium. Wilson conducts research at Gombe National Park. He and others worked with the Jane Goodall Institute, which was based at the University of Minnesota for a number of years. He shares his memories of the iconic figure, who died October 1 at age 91.
How did Jane Goodall influence you as a scientist?
My first inspiration to study apes came not from Jane Goodall, but from seeing her colleague, Dian Fossey,on television, sitting in the forest with a group of mountain gorillas. I was five or six years old. The gorillas amazed me. They were so big, so humanlike, and yet so clearly animals. As a kid fascinated by dinosaurs and evolution, seeing such humanlike animals was deeply satisfying. It seemed clear to me that we evolved from animals like that. And Dian Fossey was sitting right there with them, with a baby gorilla playing right next to her. I wanted to do that when I grew up.
While I dreamed of studying mountain gorillas, turmoil in Rwanda, where the study was located, forced me to consider other options. Dian Fossey herself was murdered in 1985. By the early 1990s, when I had graduated from college and was looking into field work opportunities, Rwanda descended into civil war, which culminated in the 1994 genocide.
Gorillas weren’t an option, but I still wanted to work in the tropics doing research that would both benefit conservation and advance scientific understanding. Pursuing those goals, I spent two years studying baboons—as a data manager in Chicago, and as a field worker living in a tent in Kenya—before going to graduate school to study chimpanzees in Uganda.
I first met Jane when I was writing up my dissertation. My advisor had worked with her at Gombe in the 1970s, and when Jane came to Boston on a lecture tour, he invited her to give a seminar. After her seminar, I rushed to my office to get her big 1986 book, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, for her to sign. When I approached her with the book, I was too much in awe of her to say a word. She smiled and signed the book nonetheless.
That evening, I went with several other grad students to MIT to see her public talk. The auditorium was packed with people. Every seat was taken, and people sat in the aisles and on the steps. The room was electric with excitement. Jane took the podium and talked for well over an hour. She had such a gift for public speaking. She spoke without notes, and with only a few slides to illustrate some key points. She told stories in such a fresh, intimate way that it felt like she was talking to us as friends in a small gathering, making off-the-cuff remarks.
After that first lecture, I heard her tell the same stories in other talks, but each time it felt fresh, as if she was just recalling something that she wanted her friends to know. In each lecture, she wove these stories together to tell a larger story about scientific discovery, conservation challenges, and work being done to save the chimps and their habitat.
I started visiting Gombe for research trips in 2001. On my first trip, I stayed in Jane’s house in Gombe. The house, located on the beach of Lake Tanganyika, is small and simply built from cinder blocks, with big windows screened in wire mesh to keep the baboons out, and a corrugated tin roof. Most of the bedrooms lack doors but instead have African kanga fabrics hanging in the doorway as privacy screens. Bookshelves contain a rich library of books on African wildlife and history.
I eventually worked for the Jane Goodall Institute as director of Gombe Stream Research Center (2004-2006). During this time, Jane would usually come to Gombe twice a year, around January and July, often in time to celebrate the anniversary of her first visit to Gombe: July 14, 1960.
Are there any particular interactions with her that stuck with you?
Jane liked to spend time alone in the forest. As a safety precaution, researchers were advised to go into the forest with at least one other person. Gombe does have venomous snakes, steep cliffs, swarms of bees, and other dangers. Jane valued the peace and quiet of being alone in nature. She especially delighted in watching chimps by herself. However, she rarely had any time to herself, and even on her visits to Gombe, a film team often came along, making one documentary or another.
One morning when Jane was visiting, I went into the forest alone, thinking it best that I keep out of the way of the film team. Turning a corner, I saw a chimpanzee approaching — a female with several young ones in tow. I recognized the chimp as Fifi, one of Jane’s favorites. Not much further down the path, I saw Jane herself. She looked at me and smiled, a twinkle in her eye, touching a finger to her lips to signal silence. We watched together as Fifi and her offspring veered off the trail to search for food in the underbrush.
Though I saw Jane again many times through the years, this was the only time we spent watching chimps in the forest together.
What do you see as Jane Goodall’s legacy as a scientist?
Jane became famous for documenting that chimpanzees make and use tools; hunt and share meat; and engage in warlike intergroup relations. At least as important as these, though, are several key scientific contributions that are not as obvious in the public eye. First, she ensured that Gombe became a truly long-term study by establishing the Jane Goodall Institute and continuing fundraising efforts her entire life. Because chimpanzees mature slowly and live a long time, many decades are needed to fully document their lives.
Second, Jane established a cooperative framework for research. She expected everyone to contribute their data to the long-term study. The collaborative spirit that Jane embodied has made Gombe research particularly productive. By working together to build and maintain a common pool of long-term data, the Gombe research team has produced an exceptionally valuable scientific resource. Researchers working with the Gombe data typically collect their own data and make use of the extensive long-term study.
Third, I think a key contribution that Jane made to research and to conservation is her focus on the individual. She strongly believed that every individual mattered. She named the chimpanzees and documented that each one had a distinctive personality. This focus on individuals enriched our scientific understanding of chimpanzees and other species. Each individual has its own interests, its own strategies in life, and these matter for making sense of larger patterns of behavior. The focus on individuals informed everything else that Jane did.
Some conservationists focus on the good of the species. They would argue that we need to focus our attention, time, and money on protecting habitat for wild chimpanzees. Jane saw each individual as important. She lobbied for the welfare of chimpanzees in laboratories and zoos, even though these captive chimpanzees were not part of wild populations. She worked to establish sanctuaries for chimpanzees confiscated from poachers and wildlife dealers across Africa.
Jane’s focus on individuals flowed from her tremendous sense of empathy. She understood that chimpanzees kept in isolation in small cages must be miserable and worked to bring attention to their plight. Her empathy extended to people.
She had empathy with the people living near parks, whose crops might be raided by wildlife, and whose children might be attacked by wild animals, including chimpanzees. She pioneered a community-centered approach to conservation. She strongly believed that if people are part of the problem, they must be part of the solution. She worked to empower people. In her books and lectures, she emphasized the importance of individuals: what each of you do everyday matters. Everyone can make a difference. Everyone matters.