Putting Down Roots

Primatologist, anthropologist and animal rights advocate Dr Jane Goodall is best known for her research on chimpanzees, but her work has since evolved to include activism and education — such as her youth-led action programme, Roots & Shoots, whose Malaysian chapter was established in 2015. Options speaks exclusively to the living legend during her third and most recent visit to the country

SINGAPORE (Apr 9): Those interested in science and nature would undoubtedly have heard of how a young English girl named Jane Goodall was recruited by anthropologist Louis Leakey and went on to do groundbreaking work herself in behavioural primatology in the 1960s in Gombe, a small forest reserve on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. Lately, however, it is her youth-led action programme, aptly named Roots & Shoots (R&S), that has placed Goodall, now 86, in the spotlight again as it gains international traction.