Thursday, January 12, 2006

Jane Goodall to receive UNESCO’s 60th anniversary medal


Read the full UNESCO press release.

The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, will award UNESCO’s 60th Anniversary Medal to Jane Goodall, the British-born primatologist, on Tuesday 17 January, at the Organization’s Headquarters in Paris (11.15 a.m., Restaurant 7th floor). The medal is presented in recognition of Ms Goodall’s lifelong dedication to the preservation of Africa’s endangered apes. “Ms Goodall’s untiring work to preserve the great apes of Africa in their natural environment fits perfectly with UNESCO’s work in favour of the environment and of sustainable development,” Mr Matsuura said. “Ms Goodall was one of the first people to sound the alarm regarding the serious danger facing the great apes, that provide us with a direct link to humanity’s past.”

Ms Goodall has been a researcher and champion of chimpanzees and other primates since she first arrived in Africa in 1960 at the age of 26. Only 400,000 great apes survive today, compared to two million 50 years ago and experts predict their extinction within three to five decades, unless present trends are reversed.

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