Hey, it's Elise Hugh with TED Talks Daily. Today, I'm so geeked out. We have a real treat,

the primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall. She's one of the world's leading scientists and

nature lovers. In her TED 2020 conversation with head of TED, Chris Anderson, she reflects on what she learned about

human tribalism from the chimpanzees she has spent her life researching.

And she issues an important reminder to put the natural world first.

Because whether it's COVID-19 or HIV-AIDS, diseases killing humans are linked to the destruction of the environment.

And she says we can heal the harm done to the planet if enough of us take action.

Dr. Jane Goodall, welcome. In your TED Talk 17 years ago, you warned us about the dangers of humans crowding out the natural world.

Is there any sense in which you feel that the current pandemic is kind of nature striking back?

It's very, very clear that these zoonotic diseases like the corona and HIV, AIDS and all sorts of other diseases that we catch from animals.

That's partly to do with destruction of the environment, which as animals lose habitat, they get crowded together.

And sometimes that means that a virus from a reservoir species where it's lived

harmlessly for maybe hundreds of years jumps into a new species then you also get

animals being pushed in a closer contact with humans and sometimes one of these animals that's

just called a virus can, you know,

provides the opportunity for the virus to jump into people and create a new disease like COVID-19.

And in addition to that, we are so disrespecting animals.

We hunt them, we kill them, we eat them, we traffic them, we send them off to the

wildlife, the wild animal markets in Asia where they're in terrible cramped conditions in tiny cages

with people being contaminated with blood and urine and feces,

ideal conditions for a virus to spill from an animal to an animal or an animal to a person.

I'd love to just dip backwards in time for a bit, because your story is so extraordinary.

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