Goodall To Give Free Talks & Book Signings, May 8 & 10

On Sunday, May 8, the humanitarian, environmentalist and United Nations Messenger of Peace Dr Jane Goodall will share her words of reflection and hope at 7:30 pm in Western CT State University’s Ives Concert Hall.

On Tuesday, May 10, the Yale Peabody Museum will bring Dr Goodall, DBE, the world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees, to the Yale University campus for a free talk and book signing event. The talk, “Reasons for Hope,” will be in Battell Chapel at 5 pm; the book signing will follow at Dwight Hall.

Dr Goodall will discuss her work with chimpanzees and the work of The Jane Goodall Institute in the areas of wildlife research, conservation and development, and education. Her message of hope inspires young people to make a difference in their world.

In the summer of 1960, a 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania to study the area’s chimpanzee population, work that would prove more successful than anyone imagined. Living in their environment and gaining their confidence for a quarter of a century, Dr Goodall made groundbreaking observations including the discovery that chimpanzees make and use tools.

The Jane Goodall Institute, founded in 1977, continues Dr Goodall’s pioneering research and is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. It also is widely recognized for establishing innovative community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa, and the Roots & Shoots education program, which has groups in more than 90 countries.

Dr Goodall received her PhD in ethology from Cambridge University in 1965 and soon returned to Tanzania where she established the Gombe Stream Research Centre. In 1984, she received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for “helping millions of people understand the importance of wildlife conservation to life on this planet.”

Other honors include the Medal of Tanzania, the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, Japan’s Kyoto Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research 2003, Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Gandhi/King Award for Nonviolence.

In April 2002 Secretary-General Kofi Annan named Dr Goodall a United Nations Messenger of Peace to help mobilize the public to work for peace and the environment. In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II named her a Dame of the British Empire, the equivalent of a knighthood.

Dr Goodall encourages young people to appreciate all creatures great and small and to recognize their own power to make a difference. The program is sponsored by the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Women in Science at Yale, the Yale Student Environmental Coalition, and the Yale Undergraduate Anthropology Group.

Admission to the Danbury event is $10 for adults, $5 for students age 18 and under. Ives Concert Hall is at 181 White Street (Route 6). Call the WCSU Office of Public Relations at 837-8486 or WCSU Professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences Dr Howard Russock, 837-8798.

Admission is free for the New Haven appearance and open to the public with seating on a first come basis. No tickets will be distributed.

Battell Chapel is at the corner of College and Elm Streets in New Haven. For further information, call the Peabody events office at 203-432-6646.