Jane Goodall on ‘Monkey Kingdom,’ Conservation and Climate Change

By Robin Kawakami in the Wall Street Journal

Primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall remembers flying over Gombe National Park back in 1960, when she began her landmark study of chimpanzees in Tanganyika, which later became Tanzania. Back then, the national park was part of a large forest that went all around Lake Tanganyika and curled down into Congo.

“When I flew over 30 years later, I was shocked to see outside the little island forest of Gombe—it was an island because it was surrounded by completely bare hills, totally bare hills,” she told Speakeasy in a phone interview. “So that’s when I realized we can’t even try to save the chimpanzees unless we improve the lives of the people struggling to survive.”

That vital link between people and nature is part of what drives Goodall, a UN Messenger of Peace and Disneynature Ambassador, in her mission to support conservation around the world.

Goodall’s latest efforts to raise awareness comes in the form of “Monkey Kingdom,” a Disneynature film narrated by Tina Fey that opens Friday. The movie, which was filmed over the course of three years, follows the path of a tocque macaque named Maya, who is born at the bottom of the social hierarchy of her troop in Sri Lanka.

Goodall talked with Speakeasy about Africa, climate change and what individuals can do to make a difference.

Edited excerpts:

There’s a lot of drama and intrigue in this film. Are there a lot of similarities between monkeys and humans?

Jane Goodall: Well I think the caste system of these monkeys is very like the caste system that you find in certain parts of the world. You’re born into a caste and only occasionally are you lucky enough to move up the social ladder as Maya did. That’s why it was so amazing. The team couldn’t possibly have known that the story was going to unfold when they selected Maya as their heroine. They selected her because she was a good-looking monkey with distinctive markings on her face and a lovely hairdo.

They were out there nearly three years. The film team really knew every monkey and their personalities, and they could talk to the people who’d been studying them for so long. So it’s based on real good knowledge—sound knowledge of the monkeys in this part of the world. And it certainly was a big help—the picturesque nature of where they live on the ruins of this 1,000 year old kingdom.

One memorable scene shows the monkeys raiding a birthday party. How was that filmed?

Well first of all, the monkeys—the lower-ranking ones—regularly go out of the forest into the city because the higher ranking monkeys get all the best food in the forest. So they have to try and supplement their diet, and there they are living on the outskirts of the city.

The birthday party—they knew there was a birthday party happening. They knew the monkeys were likely to be making a raid about that time because the monkeys have been studied for 40 years and their patterns of behavior are pretty well known. So all the team did, they persuaded the people putting on the birthday party not to chase the monkeys away and promised that they would buy more food. [laughs]

What can people learn from watching “Monkey Kingdom”?

I think what people will learn is that monkeys do indeed have personalities. They have feelings—happiness, sadness, fear. And they have minds capable of working things out and having very complex behavior, complex social structure. In other words what people will learn is we’re part of an animal kingdom and not separated from it. We share so many emotions with them.

You’re featured in “Racing Extinction,” the latest film by director Louie Psihoyos (of the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove”). The film is a wake-up call about the mass extinction of species. Is there still hope?

I think we’ve got a window of time, and I don’t know how big that window of time is—a window of time that we can start to at least slow down climate change, protect more of the forests, develop alternative energy, that sort of thing.

And maybe it’s wishful thinking because there are so many biologists who stand up and say we’re on a downward trajectory that will mean we can never hope to save much on the planet. But I truly believe there’s a window of time, but that it’s desperately urgent we all do our bit, realizing that every one of us makes some kind of difference every day.

And we have a choice as to what kind of difference we make. What do we buy? What do we eat? What do we wear? Where does it come from? How is it made? Did it harm the environment or animals or people? We start asking those questions, we start moving towards a better world.

I’ve visited Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, where this movie was filmed, and noticed the monkeys can become very aggressive when they’re near food. What should people do in these circumstances?

The main thing is if you’re going near the monkeys, which you are, is not to have food. It’s the same all over the world where you’ve got animals and humans in close proximity. Keep the food away from the animals. When I went to the Disneynature site in Alaska for the “Bears” movie, the place where I went, no bear had ever tasted or smelled human food. They were so careful. And so you can be very close to the bears without fear. And the problems you get with the monkeys is that people feed them. They think it’s cute, and it’s not.

What is your hope for this type of urban encroachment on animals’ habitats?

It is a big concern. And there are a lot of meetings of people getting together and trying to work out how animals and people can live in better harmony. And that does mean people being more careful, whether you’re dealing with raccoons in Canada or whether you’re dealing with some macaques in Sri Lanka.

The film is tied to Earth Day, April 22. Disneynature has been releasing these animal movies for years now. What sort of impact do you think they’ve had?

I think they’ve had an effect in two ways. One, I think that people coming away from these movies have a very different feeling. Unless they were scientists before, they will think differently about the animals or learn more about them. Hopefully children will become fascinated and want to learn more and get out into that sort of world.

Secondly, Disneynature gives back, so for the first week of every movie, part of the ticket sales goes to help conservation. And so for the first week of this movie, the money will go to help conserve monkeys in forests in that part of Asia. And this will help the people because people need forests too.

In this age of social media, do you think it’s harder or easier to get your conservation message across?

It works both ways. I think the thing that’s disturbing to me is the fact that so many children are really disconnected from nature. They’re spending all their time on these little gadgets and videogames and things like that. And our youth program, Roots & Shoots of the Jane Goodall Institute, we’re now in 139 countries. And one of the things we try to do is get children out into nature—or if they’re in the city, bring nature in to them. These films—okay, it’s wonderful to go and see them on the big screen, but they can also be used in classrooms afterwards with the DVD and so forth. So they’re making an impact.

Are there parts of the world that need the most help now?

Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa. With climate change, it’s getting worse, and there’s such crippling poverty there, so Africa is having a very tough time. It’s not the only place, but I know more about it.

What advice do you have for people today, who might feel like they can’t make difference?

What my mother used to tell me when I was a child, she used to say: “If you really want something, you’re probably going to have to work very hard. Take advantage of opportunity and never give up.”

So what I’m always advising people when they want to know, what should I do, how am I going to get there? First of all, find out what you really care about. What is your passion? And once you know that, then you can start working on finding out how you can attain your goal.

For every movie ticket sold opening week (April 17-23, 2015), Disneynature will make a donation to Conservation International to help protect monkeys and other endangered species in their natural habitats. Bottom of Form