VOA慢速英语2009年-EXPLORATIONS - Jane Goodall: Still Hard at

VOICE ONE:

I'm Doug Johnson.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Faith Lapidus with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Jane Goodall is one of the most well known scientists in the world. She has spent most of her career studying wild chimpanzees in a protected area of Tanzania called Gombe National Park. Over the past fifty years, she has made very important discoveries about the social behavior of chimpanzees.

Today, Miz Goodall spends most of her time traveling around the world speaking about wildlife protection and working to build support for her foundation. She recently wrote a book about endangered animals.

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VOICE ONE:

Ever since she was a child growing up in England, Jane Goodall dreamed of working with wild animals.

JANE GOODALL: "As long as I can remember, it was animals, animals. Even before I could talk, I was watching earthworms and things, reading Doctor Doolittle books, wanting to learn the language of animals. Then finding the books about Tarzan, falling in love with Tarzan."

When she was about eleven years old, she decided² that she wanted to go to Africa to live with and write about animals. But this was not the kind of thing young women growing up in the nineteen forties usually did.

JANE GOODALL: "Apart from my mother, everybody laughing, she would say if you really want something, you work hard, you take advantage of opportunity, you never give up, you find a way. So, eventually a school friend invited me to Africa."

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen fifty-seven, Jane Goodall traveled to Africa. She soon met the well-known scientist Louis Leakey and began working for him as an assistant. He later asked her to study a group of chimpanzees living by a lake in Tanzania. Very little was known about wild chimpanzees at the time. Mister Leakey believed that learning more about these animals could help explain the evolutionary³ past of humans.

JANE GOODALL: "That led to this extraordinary opportunity to study, not just any animal, but chimpanzees. I wouldn't have aspired⁴ to that. I mean, I had no degree. I wasn't qualified⁵, I thought. He thought differently."

VOICE ONE:

Louis Leakey thought Jane Goodall would be a perfect candidate for the job. She had spent much of her time reading and writing about animals. And, she was not a trained biologist. He believed this would keep her mind open to new discoveries.

Observing chimps⁶ was not easy work. They were very shy and would run away whenever Miz Goodall came near. She learned to watch them from far away using binoculars⁷. Over time, she slowly gained their trust. She gave the chimps human names such as David Graybeard, Flo and Fifi.

VOICE TWO:

Giving the chimps human names was a very unusual method. Most researchers would have identified the animals using numbers instead of names. But Miz Goodall believed that to understand animal behavior, the observer had to see the animals as individuals, not as interchangeable objects. Watching the chimps, she learned that they have very different personalities⁸, with complex family and social relationships.
　
Jane Goodall in 1964

Early on in her work at Gombe Miz Goodall made some very important and surprising discoveries. For example, many people then believed that chimpanzees only ate vegetables and fruits. But she observed that they were also meat eaters and skilled hunters. A few weeks later, she made an even more surprising discovery. She saw chimps making and using tools to help them trap insects.

JANE GOODALL: "I suppose the first really significant thing that the world heard about was chimpanzees using and making tools. It was thought that only humans did this and that this set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom."

VOICE ONE:

Jane Goodall wrote Louis Leakey to tell him about her discovery. He responded by saying: "Now we must redefine 'tool', redefine 'man', or accept chimpanzees as human."

Up to this point, Jane Goodall still did not have a degree. She returned to England to begin working towards a doctorate⁹ in animal behavioral science. She received her degree from Cambridge University in nineteen sixty-five.

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VOICE TWO:

Jane Goodall spent many years studying chimps in this area of Tanzania. Today, the research program at Gombe represents one of the longest continuous wildlife studies in the world.

Miz Goodall has written many books for adults and children about wild chimpanzees. Her scientific research was published in the book "The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior."

It explains her discoveries about chimp¹ behavior, including the extremely close relationship between mother and child. She describes the chimps' intelligence, their hunting activities and their sometimes extremely aggressive behavior.

VOICE ONE:
　
Baby chimpanzees are cared for at the Jane Goodall Institute's Tchimpounga sanctuary¹⁰

Although she has spent her life trying to protect chimps in their natural environment, these animals are still very much in danger. Miz Goodall says when she began working in Tanzania, there were between one and two million chimps in the wild. Today, she says there are about three hundred thousand at the most.

JANE GOODALL: "It's different in different countries. Chimps are in twenty-one nations. In countries like Tanzania, it's simply habitat destruction. But when we come to where the large significant populations are, which is the Congo basin, then we find that it's the bush meat trade that's the commercial hunting of wild animals for food. And, it's made possible by the logging companies, foreign logging companies, opening up the forest with roads."

VOICE TWO:

The destruction of the chimp's natural environment led Miz Goodall to give her full attention to protection efforts. She spends about three hundred days out of the year traveling around the world to discuss her many projects and goals. She talks about the efforts of the Jane Goodall Institute which she started in nineteen seventy-seven. Its aim is to increase public understanding of great apes through research, education, and activism.

The group teaches local communities how to manage their resources in ways that help them economically and protect the environment. It also has a sanctuary where baby chimps whose parents have been killed by hunters can receive treatment and protection.

VOICE ONE:
　
Jane Goodall and Roots & Shoots members plant trees

The Institute's "Roots and Shoots" program is aimed at getting young people interested in environmental activism and leadership. The group has helped connect young people who are interested in working to save animals and the environment.

JANE GOODALL: "Hundreds of thousands of young people around the world can break through and make this a better world for all living things. Main message? Each one of us makes a difference every single day we impact the world around us and if we would just think about the consequences of the little choices we make -- what we eat, wear, buy, how we interact with people, animals, the environment --then we start making small changes and that can lead to the huge change that we must have."

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VOICE TWO:

Jane Goodall's most recent book is called "Hope for Animals and Their World." It tells about efforts to save several species of endangered animals.

JANE GOODALL: "I think the one story that inspired this book was meeting a wonderful man called Don Mertin in New Zealand and he explaining to me how he had saved a species of bird called a Black Robin¹¹ when there were just seven individuals left in the world of which only two were female and only one of whom was fertile."

VOICE ONE:

Some of the species Miz Goodall discusses in the book have completely disappeared in the wild, and are only alive because they have been bred in captivity¹².

The California condor¹³ is another such example. This huge bird used to live along the West Coast of North America. By the nineteen eighties, there were only a few condors¹⁴ left in the wild. In a disputed decision, officials took the wild condors into captivity so that their breeding could be supervised and protected. The goal of such programs is to later place the species back into the wild. But preparing the captive bred condors to live in the wild again has not been easy. Threats the condors face in the wild include lead poisoning and mistaking trash for food.

VOICE TWO:

Other species in the book still exist in the wild, but are endangered. One example Jane Goodall discusses is the Golden Lion Tamarin. She tells about the hard work of a group of researchers who have successfully released these monkeys back into protected areas of Brazil. Her book shows what is possible when people come together to work cooperatively to save animals.

VOICE ONE:

Jane Goodall has said that it is often easy to feel upset about the destruction of the natural world. But her overall message has always been one of hope.

She says her hope comes from her belief in four things: the human brain, the human spirit, nature's strength and the energy of young people. She says people are starting to use their minds to solve the world's many problems and make wiser and more responsible choices. And, she believes in the strength of the human spirit which allows people to reach goals which might otherwise seem impossible.

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VOICE TWO:

This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Faith Lapidus.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Doug Johnson. Transcripts¹⁵, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.
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Additional reporting by Julie Taboh

 

1 chimp   

n.黑猩猩

参考例句：

• In fact,the color of gorilla and chimp are light-color.其实大猩猩和黑猩猩的肤色是较为浅的。
• The chimp is the champ.猩猩是冠军。

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

4 aspired   

v.渴望，追求( aspire的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She aspired to a scientific career. 她有志于科学事业。
• Britain,France,the United States and Japan all aspired to hegemony after the end of World War I. 第一次世界大战后，英、法、美、日都想争夺霸权。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

6 chimps   

（非洲）黑猩猩( chimp的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Chimps are too scarce, and too nearly human, to be routinely slaughtered for spare parts. 黑猩猩又太少，也太接近于人类，不可以作为人器官备用件说杀就杀。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 医学的第四次革命
• And as nonprimates, they provoke fewer ethical and safety-related concerns than chimps or baboons. 而且作为非灵长类，就不会产生像用黑猩猩或狒狒那样的伦理和安全方面的顾虑。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 医学的第四次革命

7 binoculars   

n.双筒望远镜

参考例句：

• He watched the play through his binoculars.他用双筒望远镜看戏。
• If I had binoculars,I could see that comet clearly.如果我有望远镜，我就可以清楚地看见那颗彗星。

8 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

9 doctorate   

n.(大学授予的)博士学位

参考例句：

• He hasn't enough credits to get his doctorate.他的学分不够取得博士学位。
• Where did she do her doctorate?她在哪里攻读博士？

10 sanctuary   

n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区

参考例句：

• There was a sanctuary of political refugees behind the hospital.医院后面有一个政治难民的避难所。
• Most countries refuse to give sanctuary to people who hijack aeroplanes.大多数国家拒绝对劫机者提供庇护。

11 robin   

n.知更鸟，红襟鸟

参考例句：

• The robin is the messenger of spring.知更鸟是报春的使者。
• We knew spring was coming as we had seen a robin.我们看见了一只知更鸟，知道春天要到了。

12 captivity   

n.囚禁；被俘；束缚

参考例句：

• A zoo is a place where live animals are kept in captivity for the public to see.动物园是圈养动物以供公众观看的场所。
• He was held in captivity for three years.他被囚禁叁年。

13 condor   

n.秃鹰；秃鹰金币

参考例句：

• The condor soars above the mountain heights.禿鹰翱翔于高山之上。
• A condor prepares to fly in Colombia.一只兀鹰在哥伦比亚准备振翅高飞。

14 condors   

n.神鹰( condor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• What would our condors feed on if no one was in danger? 你不发生危险，那我们秃鹰吃啥呢？ 来自互联网
• Yo mama so fat she has been declared a natural habitat for Condors. Yomama是如此之肥，她被定为秃鹰的自然栖息地。 来自互联网

15 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句