Danu Weaver Jane Goodall Research Paper 2/28/15

Forests in Africa are disappearing fast. All five ape species are endangered due to

this. There are only about 550,000 apes left in Africa and Asia. Jane Goodall was in Africa studying chimpanzees for over 35 years before becoming an environmentalist. She is fighting against the injustice of forests in Africa being destroyed which endangers chimps and other animals. The Jane Goodall Institute has raised awareness and money to help endangered animals in Africa, Goodall is still working to end this injustice of deforestation.
Deforestation happens because people are clearing forests to create farmland and collect wood. About 80,000 acres of rainforests are lost daily. Deforestation rates are about
8.5 higher now than they were during the 1990s. At this rate, rainforests could be completely destroyed in about a hundred years or so. That also means many animal species who call those forests their home could become extinct. It negatively affects the environment in different ways, mainly species of animals becoming endangered because of habitat loss. Other ways are erosion, locals can not hunt or fish in traditional ways, and the quality of the land is greatly damaged.
Deforestation violates Article 25 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because according to the article every person has a right to an adequate standard of living and a right to a clean environment. Rainforests being destroyed leads to an unclean and unhealthy environment for the people living in Africa near the rainforests. Article 25 also

points out that everyone has a right to be helped if they don’t have housing or work. Some locals in Africa near the rainforests do not have this.
Jane Goodall became an environmentalist because she wanted to improve the environment. According to an article in The Christian Science Monitor, Goodall stated that,
“It was so shocking to see that right across Africa were the same kind of problems I was seeing at Gombe National Park with the deforestation, the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, the live animal trade, shooting mothers to take babies. The chimpanzee population, which was somewhere between 1 and 2 million a hundred years ago, definitely more than a million when I began in ‘60. Today 220,000 is the closest estimate”.
(Interview: Jane Goodall embraces a broader mission, 2). She believed it was wrong that chimps were endangered because of environmental issues, so she decided to do something about it. Goodall does many things to raise awareness about deforestation. She toured the world to help people understand why wildlife conservation is so important. (Up Close with
Jane Goodall, 1). She also speaks to students all over the world so some day maybe they can help to stop this injustice. Another way she has raised awareness is by creating the youth environmental group called Roots and Shoots. (Jane Goodall (1934­) , 3) Also, in
2012, the Jane Goodall Institute worked with Disneynature to make the movie
Chimpanzee.
The movie is about the life of a chimp. 20 cents from every ticket sold went to the Jane Goodall Institute,