Most of the diseases that have been known to us for years – Ebola, HIV, swine and bird flu – are caused by zoonotic viruses, which means they came from animals. Over the last 40 years, the number of global pandemics has tripled, and more than two thirds of them were caused by viruses that came from animals, mostly wild animals.

With hyperconnectivity and globalisation, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has shown how fast modern epidemics can become pandemics. Scientists have been warning for years about the risks of human intervention into the environment, as well as the risk of a large-scale pandemic.

With global population on the rise, humans are going deeper and deeper into previously undisturbed nature, clearing forests – including tropical rainforests which are home to two thirds of all living organisms on the planet – hunting, extracting natural resources, and breeding cattle on a massive scale. All those activities are impacting the transmission of viruses from animals to humans.

Sixty years ago, dr Jane Goodall decided to dedicate her life to preserving endangered nature. As a primatologist, she committed herself to the pioneering work of studying the lives of chimpanzees in the wild, as well as conservation and education projects with particular emphasis on educating young people through the project “Roots and Shoots.”

Chimps have lived in the forest for thousands of years without destroying it. I would say they are much more advanced than us, looking at how in touch with their environment they are, Jane Goodall, now 86 years old, once said. Today, April 22, when we mark the International Mother Earth Day, National Geographic will air for the first time a documentary “Jane Goodall: The Hope”, which follows Goodall’s never-ending efforts to maintain a glimmer of hope in humanity.

On that occasion, N1’s Ivana Dragicevic spoke with dr Patrick van Veen, chairman of the Jane Goodall Institute Global.

Dr Goodall sent several messages to the world since the pandemic started. Concerning the job you have been doing for years now, what would be the overall message in this crisis?

The general message we are sending out as a global institute is that we are very much concerned for all the people, first of all. This pandemic has a huge influence on the lives on many people, and not just those who are getting sick, but everyone who is dealing with the lockdown. I’m now phoning from the Netherlands, from a very luxurious situation, but this lockdown has a huge impact on all those people who are living in poor conditions, they are dealing with a very serious situation at this moment. So I think the general message we are sending out is – we are very sorry for all the people who are affected by this pandemic. But, we also need to realise that this is a very important warning for what we are doing with nature. What we know for now is that the coronavirus is a zoonotic virus, disease that comes from animals, affecting humans. Why is that such a big risk? Because our relationship with nature, with animals, is so disturbed that we are endangering not only our, human species, but also all other species in the world. That is very concerning for us as an Institute, but also for Dr Goodall herself.

For years you’ve been warning about the dangers of trafficking of wild animals, be if for trophies or for food, the so-called “wet” markets in China and some habits that remained on the African continent over the years. How important is it to emphasise this subject at this moment?

It’s extremely important because we see a negative side-effect of illegal wildlife trafficking. What many people are not aware of is that illegal wildlife trafficking is one of the biggest criminal organised activities in the world . You need to consider that illegal arm trade, drugs trade, human trade, these are the three biggest criminal networks worldwide, and it’s a market of billlions; but the fourth on that list is illegal wildlife trafficking, so animals stolen from nature and illegally traded. The reason people do that is for traditional medicine, for food, hunting, but also animals that are kept as pets. This is a very long, ongoing process. One of the outcomes is that we have a very long responsibility, as the Jane Goodall Institute, to take care of chimpanzees that are confiscated in this illegal trade. We have two chimpanzee sanctuaries, Chimp Eden in South Africa and Tchimpounga in the Republic of Congo, where we take care of these animals. But, what is more important is stopping this illegal trafficking, this illegal trade in wild animals. And one of the outcomes is that we are more aware that there markets where people are selling wild animals that are stolen from nature, animals that are not normally meant for consumption, and they are used and sold at these markets. And these places, specifically, are where Covid-19 started and was transferred from animal to human. But this is not something new, this is already been going on for so many years. We saw it with MERS, we saw it with SARS, and probably many other diseases, for example like Ebola. Interaction between humans and animals can be very dangerous. Enjoying nature is not a problem, but the moment when you are organising these markets, you are not only endangering nature and these animals, you are also endangering humans. We see now in this pandemic, the effects of this kind of wildlife trafficking.

At the moment we have a big spat in the world involving the WHO, accusations about China’s behaviour, US President Trump’s behaviour. But, when we go back to the core, is China able after all these years to deal with this use of wildlife, the wet markets, traditional medicine? Can they work on that?

The Jane Goodall Institute is represented in China, we work in several cities and what we see – the feedback we receive – shows there is a growing awareness in China about the impact of these markets. So it’s not only the pressure from the outside that’s having an influence, but it’s also the growing awareness inside China that’s really changing at this moment. What we know from experience is that, the government in China can ban these illegal markets, and they can do that more effectively than in other countries. However, what we need to be aware of, we are talking sometimes about longstanding traditions, but we need to also remember that some of them are not even that old. These are very difficult to stop, but the growing awareness in China itself is a very positive thing, as well as the awareness on the impact of this pandemic. We can’t forget that this is not only a Chinese problem. This is a problem we are seeing worldwide. The way we are dealing with animals is endangering all of us, humans and animals. If you look at the way we deal with industrial animal farming, that’s also a danger to human health, and we have also seen, with the swine flu for example, there are a lot of examples of viruses being transferred from animals to humans in industrial animal farms. The way we look at animals is absolutely a worldwide challenge, but at this moment, the wildlife markets in China are a serious concern.

Can we learn anything from this or will we just try to go back to our old tracks of economic growth like before?

I think we will learn from this, and let me give you one very specific example we have seen as our institute. He have a tradition that once every two years, the core team has a meeting, that is Dr Goodall, the board and our representatives of our thirty chapters in the world. Normally it’s around 60 people. Jane is now 86 and we want to secure her legacy and that’s why we meet to understand how she wants this organisation to continue. The last global meeting was supposed to be in the second week of March. However, we got calls in February from our Chinese colleagues who said they can’t join us because they were in lockdown. Slowly we understood it was impossible to hold this global meeting, which was planned to take place in Vienna, Austria. So, in the end, we decided to have a small core team of people in Vienna to moderate, and everyone else was calling in. It was a bit of a challenge due to time difference. Jane was in her house in Bournemouth where she is self-isolating, she also called in. Our conclusion was after four days of such meetings was that they were hugely successful and we should do it more frequently. It was money-saving, but also the helped with the carbon footprint. The lessons we learned was that we can have excellent meetings this way, supported by technology. I hear people say they were always negative about technology, but I think the pandemic will bring a few good things, and if one of them is that we travel less for meetings, that’s something that is going to change the world.

We have to tackle the fundamental problem, there are almost eight billion of us on the planet, human penetration into nature is huge, biodiversity is in danger and we are witnessing hyper-urbanisation in a lot of places. In the last years, we as humanity have seen a lot of these “enlightening” moments, one of them is the climate crisis, another is this pandemic. Do you think that we will understand how much we need nature and that we need to act globally?

We have learned that people forget very easily. Probably, when this pandemic is over, and people go back to their normal lives, we can easily forget what the impact was. However, I hope that at least some people will learn an important lesson – how important this relationship between nature, environment, and humans is. I sometimes say that the biggest endangered species will be the human species, because if we continue the way we are doing things now, there is at least one species that will not survive, and that is the human species. That is maybe not going to happen in our generation, maybe not in the next generation, but if we continue like this, the world will get in trouble. Maybe this pandemic is a very important warning. Of course, a lot of people are eager to continue their lives the way they did before. But, if a small percentage of people learn an important lesson and conclude that our behaviour towards nature should change, if people start to consider the bad side-effects of these markets, perhaps we have a positive result of this. I am aware that a lot of people want to continue with their old habits, but some people will change their behaviour. Dr Goodall always says – every individual can make a difference.

Africa is where Ebola happened, we can still see some smaller outbreaks. Your work in Africa with the chimpanzees is your core activity. What is your experience with that?

I was in February in Africa, visiting a few sanctuaries. I was very surprised, in a positive way, how Africa is handling this situation. I was in Sierra Leone and Liberia, two countries that were hit heavily by the Ebola. There were very strict checks at the airport – health checks, temperature checks. Everywhere in the city you were obligated to wash your hands. We saw that Africa, specifically the western part of the continent, has learned a very serious lesson from the Ebola and were prepared to start dealing with this early. I was really impressed by it, because, when I came back to Europe two weeks later, there were no checks for the coronavirus, you would just walk through the airport, nothing had changed, nothing was going on, and that was the first weekend in March. Africa has dealt with a lot of these problems, Ebola was the last of them to hit west Africa in particular, and you see that, not only Africa, but also WHO, they are at least trying to have control over the spread of the disease, and that’s at least a good thing. However, our work with the chimpanzees and our youth project, Roots and Shoots, is being impacted. Many schools in Africa are closed, gatherings with young people in Africa are not allowed, so part of that programme absolutely came to a halt. But also our programmes related to chimpanzees are very much affected by this. In Senegal we have a wildlife research centre and the people working there are at this moment in complete isolation. We started to work on awareness in surrounding villages, helping people get access to soap, bleach, and make them aware of what Covid-19 is and what the impact can be. And that is what we’re trying to do everywhere where we’re working with chimpanzees and the surrounding villages. In our sanctuaries, we see a similar approach, staff is isolated, we have small teams, all staff that isn’t immediately needed is asked to leave the sanctuary to avoid the virus entering the sanctuary. One of the most important projects in Gombe, Tanzania is the place where Jane started, exactly 60 years ago. The staff there is very limited, the research following the chimpanzees is still continuing, but our staff there is completely isolated. Also, in the villages around Gombe, we are starting with a programme for raising awareness, trying to get as much protection material there, masks, gloves, protective clothes, to avoid the virus being transferred back to the animals.

We’ve seen some cases of the virus being transferred back, how much danger is there now for the animals from people?

There are some confirmed cases of the Covid-19 being transferred, it’s specific to cats at this moment. We know the example of the tiger in the New York Zoo, also the confirmed case in a cat in Belgium. Coronaviruses, this family of viruses, are very frequently seen in cats, so cats being sensitive to Covid-19 is not a big surprise. We know apes, chimpanzees, are very sensitive to human respiratory diseases, that is why all our researchers in the wild always have to wear masks, and if someone has a cold, they cannot visit the chimpanzees. Absolutely, human interaction with chimpanzees, but also other apes and monkey, is a danger. One of our biggest concerns is that humans are going to transfer respiratory diseases to the chimpanzees. At this moment, there are luckily no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in chimpanzees or other apes, but we don’t know exactly what the effects of Covid-19 would be. We sometimes see that when a disease is transferred from human to an animal, the animals are not affected at all or not much. But there are also diseases and viruses that have had a much stronger negative effect on animals than on humans. One example is the measles, which is sometimes transferred from humans to chimpanzees, and in that case we see that the mortality rate in chimpanzees is very high. So one of our biggest concerns at this moment is that Covid-19 will jump from humans to chimpanzees or other animals and it could affect huge populations in Africa.

Dr Jane Goodall’s fundamental discoveries on chimpanzee behaviour and their use of tools have changed primatology and understanding of apes as a whole. These creatures share the biggest part of their genome with us as humans, what can we learn from them in these times?

Jane’s discoveries 60 years ago on the behaviour of chimpanzees were proof of their social intelligence. She discovered their tool-making, hunting, warfare and so on. I think a few things we can learn from chimpanzees concern extremely social behaviour they show. Chimps are caring animals, they take care of individuals in the group. Everybody knows about the grooming behaviour of the chimpanzees. No, they don’t have fleas in their fur like some people think – this is social behaviour, meant to comfort the other. The social behaviour to appease when you had conflict. And this grooming behaviour is so important in the pattern of behaviour of these animals, because with it they are saying ‘you can trust me, I will take care of you.’ What is specific in this crisis is that we are asked to keep distance from each other. I hope that when it is over that we are reminded that we need to be social creatures and take care of each other. I hope that this grooming behaviour, or some way of saying ‘you can trust me, I’ll take care of you’ will also be an important behavioural pattern for humans. They don’t look at the fur and what is there, but are just paying attention, showing genuine interest, that is something we can learn from chimpanzees.

We are celebrating World Earth Day today. You, as an institute, are doing it together with National Geographic with the world premiere of the film called “Hope.” How important is hope today, how much do we need it?

Maybe this is a moment in history when people are really looking forward to having a message of hope. There are so many negative things going on in the world, but what we are also seeing is the resilience of nature, and that is one of the reasons for Dr Goodall’s hope. Another reason is children, young people. You see the initiatives young people are showing on social media, the initiatives of young people taking care of others. But also technology, what Dr Goodall always says. This technology is absolutely helping us survive with nature and humans living together.

Maybe, and this is not what Dr Goodall herself would say, but, in my role as chair of the Global Institute I can say that some of us have hope because of Dr Goodall herself. A young woman, so dedicated and so willing to go to Africa at a time when nobody would go to Africa – she goes, she does it. She continues to do her work in very difficult circumstances, does her PhD, starts to build up her institute to focus on conservation, helping chimpanzees, but also working with local communities. Then she starts the Roots and Shoots programme, gets so many young people involved in conservation, issues of nature and the environment, but also of taking care of humans.

Now she is 86. I was really concerned when we talked in February, we were discussing what we would do with the whole situation surrounding Covid-19. Sometimes we argued about it. And now she’s sitting in Bornemouth, maybe more active than ever. One of the things she said to me was ‘I wish I had the energy I have now when I was 30, I could have done so much more.’ Maybe the best reason for hope is seeing this movie. Maybe Jane is a very good reason for hope, as an example of what humans can achieve.