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Jane Goodall, chimps and the tool tycoon

May 10, 2002|By William Mullen, Tribune staff reporter.

"It was just the sort spectacular finding we needed to keep the project going," said Goodall, who later won her academic credentials with a PhD in ethology at Cambridge University.

Wilkie continued for the rest of his life to support Goodall's work, but once his initial grant was up, the National Geographic Society stepped in as the major underwriter of her expanding operations.

"I used to see Leighton and his wife, Adele, fairly regularly," Goodall said, "either in Africa, when they visited me at Gombe, or when I came here. He was filled with energy, and always wanted to hear about the chimps. He was a great family man, so he was fascinated to hear about chimp family values."

Benefactor remembered

In his honor, she named a Gombe chimp "Wilkie," a male born in 1952. A photo she took of Wilkie using a piece of straw to probe a termite mound hangs in Adele Wilkie's California home, along with the actual piece of straw.

Wilkie grew up to be so formidable, he deposed the reigning chimp alpha leader, Goblin, and ruled the Gombe chimps until he was deposed by a younger male, Freud.

Freud is the son of Fifi, a female who was an infant when Goodall first came to Gombe. She is last of the original chimps Goodall studied who is still alive.

"She's amazing," Goodall said. "She's 43 years old and pregnant again."

The Gombe chimps have been under continuous study longer than any other wild animal group in the world. Goodall knows them well, but she leaves most of the research to others, as she travels about 300 days a year now, speaking and raising money.

The groups she said she likes most to speak to are the schoolchildren who are part of her Roots & Shoots program, which has more than 3,000 clubs in 68 countries. The clubs augment school curriculums with projects studying animal behavior and environmental concerns.

"There will be very little left to preserve if we aren't raising the next generation to take better care of the wildernesses and wildlife," she said before the sessions. "We have to inspire children to be kind, respectful and valuing of all life."