Jane Goodall’s State of the Great Ape
Production Details
‘State of the Great Ape’ is a two-hour special for Discovery/Animal Planet for broadcast in 2004. It examines the situation facing our closest relatives, the great apes – gorillas, bonobos, orangutans and chimpanzees – and follows people all over the world who, like Jane Goodall, believe the great apes can still be saved from extinction.
In October 2000, Dr Jane Goodall and other leading great ape experts gathered in London to discuss the future of the great apes. The meeting ended with an announcement: under current conditions great apes would be extinct in the wild within 20 years. The news sent shockwaves through the conservation community. For many people it seemed as if the battle had already been lost.
But Dr Goodall refuses to give up. She believes that there are reasons for hope – reasons to believe that this trend can be reversed and that the great apes can be saved. Her hope rests on ordinary people doing extraordinary things – achieving the seemingly impossible against the odds.
‘State of the Great Ape’ travels the world to meet people who, like Jane Goodall, refuse to accept defeat. We visit the front lines in the battle to understand and protect great apes. Among them: Indonesia, where orphaned orangutans are trained and returned to a new life in the wild; the Virunga mountains in Rwanda where war and unrest have failed to deter workers fighting to safeguard mountain gorillas; the USA where captive great apes have amazed the world with new insights into their language skills. And the Central African Republic, where one group of newly habituated gorillas still thrives, protected from bushmeat hunters’ guns and snares.
Closer to home, Jane Goodall and her favourite Gombe chimp Gremlin undergo DNA testing to reveal just how closely related chimps and humans are. Throughout the show, results from ‘State of the Great Ape’ s online survey illustrate how much the public really knows about great apes – and how far they are prepared to go to save them. For instance, does the public believe that chimps should have the same rights as humans? And Dr Goodall explains her philosophy of hope, and the role we all have to play if the great apes are to be saved.
‘State of the Great Ape’ is an overview of the great apes’ place in the world, their skills, their cultures, the latest research, and our attitudes towards them.
