Happy Birthday Jane Goodall! How to Celebrate Her Work -- And Help Chimpanzees
It was Jane Goodall's birthday earlier this week—she's 78! Here are a few ideas to celebrate her life and accomplishments, and to help the world's endangered chimpanzees.
- Support two important pieces of legislation for chimps and make sure your representatives do, too: The Great Ape Protection Act would end the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research and retire all federally-owned chimpanzees to permanent sanctuary.
- And the Captive Primate Safety Act would prohibit interstate commerce in monkeys, apes and other nonhuman primates for the exotic "pet" trade—to bring an end to tragedies like the dozens of animals who were killed in Ohio last year, and to smaller but far more frequent stories like Charlie, a capuchin "pet" monkey that his owner decided she didn't want anymore. Giving up a pet is hard enough with cats and dogs, but there's no system set up in the U.S. for abandoned exotic animals like monkeys and chimpanzees.
- Eat mindfully: if you need convincing that a plant-based diet is more sustainable—and why individual choices matter for a sustainable society—read Jane Goodall's book, Harvest of Hope.
- Make plans to see Disneynature's upcoming Chimpanzee, which opens April 20 and for the first week, Disney will donate 20 cents to the Jane Goodall Institute for every ticket sold.
- And finally, here's a TED talk she did several years ago about how the only real difference between humans and chimps is our sophisticated language. It's great, she's great, check it out:
