The famous British primatologist Jane Goodall enters the Grévin museum

This scientist and activist is an international figure in the fight for the preservation of the environment. At 90 years old, she hasn’t finished saying what she has to say, and although her wax double will be inaugurated on Friday, she has never been so alive.

In the 1960s, at just 26 years old, this self-taught woman, armed only with her passion for animals, decided to go and live near chimpanzees in Tanzania to study their natural way of life, revealing their ability to use tools for feeding.

An experience that will forever change the way we collectively look at primates, and which will also change her, profoundly. Because this is how Jane Goodall became a scientist, first through the field, then by obtaining a degree in ethology, the science of animal behavior, at Cambridge. As she confides in a long interview with the newspaper The world.

In the 1980s, she discovered the decline in chimpanzee populations and their captivity conditions in the context of medical research. This is how little by little this tireless activist for animal and environmental causes became an activist. “I didn’t make a conscious decision to become an activist. I went to these conferences as a scientist and left as an activist.”she explains.

She calls on political leaders

At 90 years old, United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2002, Jane Goodall continues to fight for the environment but also against poverty, convinced “that we cannot save the chimpanzees and the forests if the villagers do not have the means to earn a living”.

And while COP 28 has just opened, she addresses in The world to world leaders a message: “make ambitious commitments and honor them! Because you have not honored those you have made so far (…). Thousands of young people of all ages are setting up projects across the world, in all country, I see passionate people rolling up their sleeves. They are ready to do their part, so let’s do ours too!”the scientist gets carried away.