The weakness of her handshake and the fragility of her voice both belie Jane Goodall’s unceasing inner strength and enthusiasm for life.

Her 75-year-old eyes, however, are a real giveaway – they say it all.

The start of Jane Goodall’s story has been well documented over the years, tracing her fascination with animals from her childhood reading of Doctor Dolittle books and early observations of her dog Rusty through to the beginning of her famous chimpanzee study in the remote wilds of Africa. Without formal training, it was only her “unlimited enthusiasm and self-confidence” that convinced the renowned palaeontologist Louis Leaky to make her dream of studying primates a reality.

She still remembers her feelings upon first arriving in the British protectorate of Tanganyika: “It was just so exciting and dreamlike. I actually found it very hard to believe that it was happening – it was incredible.”

While her lack of experience and unorthodox methods irked many in the academic community, her discoveries could not be ignored. By being the first person to document chimpanzees not only using tools, but also making them, she obliterated a long-held definition of what separated humans from animals.

Despite all her scientific breakthroughs, she still feels that one of her greatest accomplishments has been in changing our perception of animals.

“Studying the chimps has enabled me to get across the message that we humans are not the only beings with personalities and feelings. I’ve shown that they are just like us. This has led to people developing a new respect, not just for the chimps, but for all the other amazing animals with whom we share this planet.”

While the original chimpanzee study in Gombe Stream National Park is still alive and well, now using sophisticated technological tools such as GPS handsets, satellite imagery and DNA analysis to unearth more secrets about the species, Goodall has taken a step back from it to focus on an array of conservation issues. Although renowned for her work to save wildlife, many of the projects currently being led by the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) are now being aimed at helping people in need. She explains what spawned the expansion of her work’s scope beyond animals.

“Even though I knew there was deforestation outside Gombe, it wasn’t until a flight over the area in a small plane that its extent hit me. Basically, all the trees outside the national park were gone – the land was over-populated and over-cultivated. There were more people living than the land could support. It was so very degraded – you could look down and see the erosion. And that was when I thought, how could I possibly even try to save the chimps if the people living around them are struggling to survive?”

I ask Goodall if she, as a celebrated primatologist and conservationist, has a harder time raising funds and awareness for people in trouble.

“It’s actually far more often that I’m asked: ‘how can you possibly spend so much time and money trying to save chimpanzees when there are so many starving people?’”

The types of humanitarian JGI projects in operation today range range widely. For instance, one trains ‘peer educators’ in the Morogoro and Bunda districts of Tanzania to help promote a greater understanding of HIV/AIDS through anti-stigma campaigns, while another is community-centred conservation effort in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which promotes sustainable livelihoods, family planning and improves infrastructure, including the building of a micro-hydropower plant. Unsurprisingly, many of these projects also have direct or indirect links to the protection of wildlife and the environment. For instance, providing the remote DRC village with regular hydroelectricity has reduced the locals’ need for shift-and-burn agriculture, as well as lessened
their requirement for harvesting firewood for heating and cooking.

Goodall is one of many who understand that if local communities stand to benefit from conservation, they will get behind it. “If there’s no benefit, you can’t expect them to care two hoots,” she says.

She believes eco-tourism has a role to play in this regard. Two such JGI programmes in Uganda, which lead tourists on forests walks to chimpanzee groups, now provide sustainable incomes for people whose daily survival once relied on illegal logging and the poaching of wildlife for bushmeat.

“We encourage people to visit our community projects as well so that they can get a feeling for the type of lives these Africans experience. This makes them more understanding of the problems facing these unique cultures,” she notes.

The JGI recently teamed up with Baobab Expeditions, creating Gombe 2009, a one-off 11-day Tanzanian safari that takes in Gombe Stream National Park, the site of Goodall’s famous work. With the world-renowned anthropological expertise of the JGI on board, and a visit to their Tanzania research centre (closed to the general public), the single trip, which runs this October, will undoubtedly be a special one indeed for all those involved.

Goodall is well aware that tourism can also have its major pitfalls, noting: “If you bring in too many people, they will damage the very thing they have come to see. The better way is to spread the tourism out, to have more local people earning a living from it. We need to stop tourists pouring into certain areas.”

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Although an obvious proponent of responsible tourism, Goodall feels that this is often more up to the visitor than the host to ensure. “If someone offers large sums of money to a guide to go off the road or to do something illegal, you can’t expect that person to turn it down when they are earning so little. It is we who have to be responsible. Unfortunately, so many tourists are not.”

With Goodall having spent years fighting against the killing of animals in the bushmeat trade, I wonder how she felt about the sanctioned culling of elephants within the closed environments of certain national parks and reserves.

“Oh gosh, this is a nightmare situation,” she utters. “To be honest, I don’t know what to say about it. I’ve seen film of what happens to the elephants and it’s really horrible, but then equally, I’ve seen herd sizes grow within a national park, and that just totally destroys the vegetation, which means many animals will starve – it’s a no-win situation. Perhaps if they’re going to do it they could find a way of killing a whole herd and not just leaving babies. I just thank god that I don’t have to make any such decisions myself.”

When faced with growing environmental issues such as global warming, Goodall isn’t shy about using her fame and reputation to gain access to politicians at the highest of levels.

“Some politicians aren’t going to change for anything. Other politicians do have hearts, and if you can find a way to reach that part of them, then you are halfway there. The Bush administration was particularly woeful, but they are now gone – thank goodness. Many people in the Obama administration I actually knew before, so we’ve had very good relations from the outset. Some of the African governments have also been quite supportive, as have the people in the government of China who I’ve met with.”

She’s quick to point out who she’s up against when lobbying governments: “A lot of the changes that we want to see – more stringent controls on emissions etc – are not in the vested interest of big business, and these companies put a lot of pressures on politicians to stop them from making environmental progress.”

She adds, “We can’t just go to an African government and say, ‘Your forests are your children’s heritage – don’t sell off your trees to big foreign companies.’ We have to give them an alternative, a different source of income. Eco-tourism is some help, but that isn’t big money. So the only possible hope, if it can be worked out is carbon trading to avoid deforestation. My point is to try to offer money to the government and the people (as they have done in Costa Rica) if they don’t cut the trees down. So the polluting companies pay for saving the forests. While this is only a short-term fix, it might help the forests until a sustainable solution is reached.”

While Goodall does dedicate time and resources to the political spectrum, it must be said that she devotes her heart and soul to the youth of today. “I could kill myself trying to raise money to save chimps and forests, but if we’re not raising new generations to be better stewards than we’ve been, what is the point?” she says.

Her Roots and Shoots organisation, which inspires youth into practical, positive action for the good of people, animals and the environment by helping them understand how important a healthy planet is to human survival, is clearly her biggest passion.

Its website states: “This powerful, youth-driven network fosters a fun, flexible and supportive environment where young people come together to share ideas and inspiration, implement successful community service projects and participate in special events and international campaigns.”

Started in the 1990s, Roots and Shoots now has tens of thousands of young people participating, in over 100 countries. This year it reached another milestone in the UK, with its 400th school joining the programme.

In speaking with her today, I come to understand that nothing she has done in her life to date is as important to her as the hope she’s instilling in the youth of today. She has said before that “shoots seem so new and fragile, but to reach the light they can move boulders and break concrete.” While, as she herself  admits, Goodall won’t be around to witness the myriad accomplishments of these roots and shoots, she will have been the seed from which they all came forth.