Nick Nichols on Capturing the Essence of Jane Goodall
Jane saw my book, Gorilla: Struggle for Survival in the Virungas and thought, “Why don’t do you do that with chimps?”
Jane knew that chimps are a million times more complicated than Gorillas. Chimps have been used as human surrogates in biomedical research along with their use in space programs. At the time I came along, there was a 1989 conference about chimpanzees. People were realizing that chimps were in trouble with habitat destruction, they didn’t have rights, and there were a lot of biomedical issues. Who better to be a flagship for chimp issues than Jane Goodall, with her work in Gombe? At that point she was not yet an advocate. It was her time to say: “I’m a serious