With her signature shawl draped over her shoulders and silver hair pulled back from her face, Jane Goodall exudes serenity – even over our slightly blurry video call.
In a Vienna hotel room, a press team and a small group of filmmakers, who are documenting her latest speaking tour, fuss around her.
The famous primatologist and conservationist settles into a high-backed chair that dwarfs her slender frame.
On my screen I can see that behind her, on a shelf, is her toy monkey, Mr H.
The toy was given to her nearly 30 years ago by a friend and has travelled the world with her. Dr Goodall is now 90 years of age, and she and Mr H are still travelling.
“I am a little bit exhausted,” she admits. “I’ve come here from Paris. And after here I go to Berlin, then Geneva. I’m on this tour talking about the danger to the environment and some of the remedies,” she says.
‘The sixth great extinction is happening now’
One of the remedies she wants to talk about today is a tree-planting and habitat restoration mission that her eponymous foundation and non-profit technology company, Ecosia, are carrying out in Uganda. Over the past five years, with the help of local communities and smallholder farmers, the organisations have planted nearly two million trees.
“We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction,” Dr Goodall tells me during our interview for BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science. “The more we can do to restore nature and protect existing forests, the better.”
The primary aim of this project is to restore the threatened habitat of Uganda’s 5,000 chimpanzees.
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