Jane Goodall was 23 years old when she pursued her dream that everyone had told her was impossible: studying chimpanzees in their native Habitat: Africa. Just going to Africa was a ridiculous thing for an English girl in 1960 to want, but no one had ever studied chimpanzees in the wild. They had only been studied inside cages in laboratory.

Jane made huge discoveries, that proved Chimps aren’t that different from Humans at all. They created tools to find food, played games like tag in the trees, talked in their own language of grunts and movements, helped each other out, and more. At first Jane just watched the Chimps from afar. But as the days passed the Chimpanzees allowed her to get closer and closer, and eventually she could sit right next to them, feeding them bananas, or even checking them for bugs like the chimps do to each other!

But there was still massive threats toward Chimpanzees.The population Africa is growing fast, which means natives chopping down trees to make clearings for other settlements. If they chop down all the trees the Chimps don’t have a habitat anymore. Population growing also means humans taking the resources (like food and water) that chimps need too. If humans take them all, it will be impossible for them to survive.

Hunters are killing Mother Chimpanzees to take their babies to use for entertainment, zoo’s, circuses, commercials, television, and more. To train they may use methods that are harmful to the chimps. Poachers are killing chimpanzee, after Chimpanzee, for their bones, fur, or even to a sell them as house pets. Nearly all of this hunting and poaching is done illegally, with around 3,000 chimps getting killed every year.

Scientists are taking chimpanzees from Africa and introducing a dreary metal cage as their new home. There they are help in a laboratory, as scientist inject different drugs and viruses into them to see their body’s reaction before testing it on humans. The results of their experiments were not even getting accurate results, because a chimpanzee’s organ structure is completely different, and not built to withstand those diseases, therefore all the chimps died very quickly.

Whatever the reason, Chimpanzees were in trouble: and Jane Goodall knew it. She teamed up and made plans with the native people of Africa, deciding what places to settle, and what places to let grow. She worked to set up the Gombe National park, a place that took in mistreated chimp from zoo’s, circuses, and sick chimps as well. It is run by volunteers from the Jane Goodall Institute.Through the Jane Goodall Institute she set up a program called Roots and Shoots (See website here: https://www.rootsandshoots.org/ ) to empower young people to take action to save the places they love, and take action on the topics they care about. Roots and shoots is going on all over the world.

Jane continues to do everything she can to help the environment. 300 out of the 365 days of the year she is traveling (to make speeches) and has been doing so since 1968 non-stop. Jane had motivated countless people of all ages to take action on the issues they care about.

And this starts with you.

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