NEW YORK -- A new documentary finds Jane Goodall telling a rapt audience how, growing up in England, she saw herself as the Jane who should rightfully have shared jungle life with Tarzan.
As a child, she already had set her sights on working with wild animals in their natural habitat. At 26, she headed to Africa to study chimpanzees at Gombe National Park in what is now Tanzania. That was in 1960.
Years of patient observation of these creatures' behavior -- so similar, found Goodall, to that of humans -- led her to many discoveries. Among them: Chimpanzees eat meat, and they fashion tools out of twigs and blades of grass.
But along the way, Goodall the observer and scholar became Goodall the advocate. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife and Conservation in 1977. Then, at a conference a decade later, she was shocked by fellow primatologists' reports of rampant poaching and habitat destruction. Her life as a field scientist had come to an end. She was now a full-time activist.
Since then, Goodall, who turns 70 next month, has maintained a punishing schedule of travel: for lectures and lobbying, for raising money and awareness, for signing books (she's written a dozen).
Driven by ''genes and sheer determination,'' she is on an endless campaign trail that keeps her from the wilderness she's so committed to preserving. That is the story behind ''Jane Goodall's Return to Gombe,'' a one-hour documentary airing at 8 p.m. EST Monday on Animal Planet.
The film follows Goodall on an all-too-brief, all-too-rare visit back to her favorite spot on Earth, where she reconnects with her beloved apes. Then, too soon, duty calls her away.
Deprived of what she loves best, in order to help save it: That's a bitter irony, Goodall concedes as she meets with a reporter while in New York for lectures and publicity. For this is someone who, if asked what she most fancies, says, ''To be out in the forest, or some wild place, by myself -- completely away.''
But she's not complaining.
''Until 1986, I got to live my dream,'' she notes as, nearby, a car alarm wails. ''How many people get to live their dream? But then you realize that animals are threatened with extinction, and you realize the extent of global pollution, and you think how we've damaged the world.
''I have to do my best, my bit, however small it may be,'' she says, ''to try and turn things around before it's too late. So I can't stop.''
In her hotel suite, the table lamps are off to conserve a bit of energy and, besides, she prefers natural light, limited though it may be on this dull winter day.
But on the documentary, viewers see Goodall in her natural habitat. At one point, she greets a powerful ape she has known for years.
''Just the most lovely old man,'' she says as the ape buttons a cuff of her shirt sleeve, then tenderly massages her eyelids.
She describes another chimp, best friend Gremlin, as ''a thinking, feeling individual,'' and adds, ''I'd give anything to be in the mind of a chimpanzee and look out on the world through a chimpanzee's eyes -- even if it's for just a couple of minutes.''
Regard for animals is only proper, Goodall contends. It lends some much-needed humility to the human race, which, after all, is part of the animal community -- not towering above it.
''We are not the only beings on the planet with personalities, minds and feelings,'' she says. ''Animals as individuals matter. And we should respect that.''
She is a powerful symbol of such a world view. A slight, girlish figure with her gray hair pulled into a ponytail, she is a celebrity, a global presence among whose countless honors include her installation last month as a Dame of the British Empire.
Yet Goodall, anything but hoity-toity, focuses much of her energies on children. They, she has learned, are more receptive to her crisis call. Her Roots & Shoots program has engaged youngsters in more than 87 countries.
''If young people truly learn to understand there are limits to our natural resources, and never fall prey to the unsustainable lifestyles so many adults have adopted, then there is hope,'' she says. ''And we just have to cling to that hope.
''This planet is in dire, dire need,'' she says with quiet resolution, ''and it's going to take all of us getting together to do something about it -- particularly in this country, with this (presidential) administration and its unbelievable record of environmental damage.
''I feel anger, definitely,'' admits Goodall when she thinks of how the odds are stacked against her cause. ''But I try to keep the peace of the forest within. That's what I draw on.''
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