tonight, two amazing lives, the renowned british broadcaster and naturalist on his wild encounters protecting the planet and his passion for our wonder rouse world. and the woman who revolutionized everything we thought we knew about being human, with her ground breaking work on chimpanzees. jane goodall joins us. ♪ amanpour was made possible

by the support of walter. >> good evening, everyone and welcome to the program. i'm christian amanpour in london with a special edition of the show. to many of us, indeed to millions around the world he needs no introduction. we've grown up watching him and listening to his soothing voice our soundtrack to nature's awesome wonder. he is sir david, the legendary naturalist, whose latest tv series "be2" was the most watched in the uk in 2017, pulling in over 17 million viewers per episode. it's about to air across the united states and around the world and actually set off a movement to halt the devastating impact of plastics that are polluting our oceans. i caught up with him between travels as he was celebrating his 90th birthday. as you will see, he's nowhere near putting his feet up and he plans to continue his face to faces encounters with our

planet's many curious inhabitants. sir david, welcome to our program. >> thank you very much. >> what is the secret of your passion and energy still today? >> i think it helps to be interested in what you're doing. an awful lot of people including me would actually pay for what i'm doing to be truthful. so why stop? it's a lottery, isn't it? i know a lot of people cleverer than me or whatever, all sorts of things. but you can't do it anymore. it's not their fault they can't remember things. i can't remember a lot of things. but, you know, not being able to walk is pretty bad. >> you have so much energy and you're so active. what do you remember how you first got fascinated in this world of wildlife? >> i think every child born is interested in t world of wildlife. by the age of 4, they're still interested in wildlife.

i took out a godson and he turned over a stone, look what a treasure, a slug. of course, he's right. what are those funny things at the front for? how can it see? what does he feed on? how does he move? >> people have come to love you and the program because of the way you relate to them. you never seem to lose that wow factor. if you could, what would be your biggest wow factor in terms of the animals you have met and frankly communicated with? >> i can't communicate with a tiger, you know. i can't communicate with some, we're primates and we can communicate with other primates. there are other things, too. we can communicate with dogs. we can communicate with dolphins, if you're clever

enough. >> you say primates. of course, there is that classic footage of you with the gorillas where you were doing a presentation to camera and all of a sudden the gorilla sort of took over. we're just going to play this. >> there is more. meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal i know. this is how they spend most of their time, lounging on the ground, grooming o another. sometimes, they even allow others to join in. >> it never gets old, that, sir david, it never ever gets old. >> it couldn't have happened if it wasn't for an amazing woman named diane, who did this. i get all kinds of unreflected

glory. people think how clever. dia diane fossey made that possible, not me. >> you had this amazing moment with a baby rhino and you literally got on all fours and tried to imitate the noise the rhino was making. >> that's not difficult. >> you don't often see a man on all fours communicating at the animal's level. >> naturally. not terrifically clever to crawl on all fours. i will do it for you if you like. >> i don't want you to do it. let's listen for a second. it is amazing. as you say, he had a cataract and living in a veryark world. those rhinos, plus the elephants

are facing very very serious peril to their existence, some facing extinction. cnn has done an amazing report of a census with a savannah elephant, they say between 2007 and 2014, in seven years, the populations have declined by 15% and today they're declining by 8%, mostly due to poaching and most will face extension. what do you say to that? >> i think it's a crime. that if it happens, will arrest heavily on humanity's shoulders. it's appalling. >> what should be done? conservationists have tried and

poachers are acting like organized criminals with heavy machine guns and acc 47s. >> they are. in the end, it has to come to it they can become totally protected. the sale of ivory, certainly of ivory collected no more than 100 years old should be illegal. i don't see any way of getting around it. >> do you ever worry, aer six decades of doing this, this great planet, this great wild life is in deeper danger than even the most dedicated conservationists kar conservationist can prevent? >> i do. of course i do. we know how to fix it. it isn't magic. we know the steps that can be taken and we need to get the world's nations to agree to do it. that's the problem.

it can be done. >> if anybody's programs, if anybody's life's work has been exactly dedicated to that, it's you. you are the pioneer and you remain the master of this profession. are people paying enough attention? >> they're not paying enough, that's for sure. but they're paying more than they did, you know. if you talk to young people today, young people are passionate about wildlife, much more than when i was a kid, their age. they're really angry what people are doing to the natural world and really want to care about it and do something about it. >> are you in any doubt about the man made impact on the climate we as humans have to change this? >> there's no doubt of this. there is no doubt the globe is warming, can't be any doubt about that at all. the argument can be is how far we are responsible.

even if we weren't responsible we ought to be doing something to stop it. we can, again, we know what to do. we should stop burning carbon, simple as that. we can do it if we want to do it. just the slightest concentration by the technicalically advanced nations of the world taking the resources from the sun and wind and sea to replace carbon-based energy, can be done. we have basic science and need to simply refine the technology to make it cheaper to take it from the ground. >> you are a believer that man, human kind affects our climate and the global warming? >> yes. don't have any doubt. if you look at the grass of the industrial revolution, look at before the industrial revolution how much carbon dioxide is in

the air and then you see the climate and that against the industrialization of mankind that. >> let's go to the bird of paradise moment you found when you were doing one of your programs here. we will see you speaking as the bird wants to get his way in as well. >> the great pacifier of the natural world -- [ bird noise ] when he came to make a scientific name for this bird called it wahoo. the bird of paradise without legs. [ bird noise ]. >> you finally got it out what you were trying to say. >> that bird was bred in captivity. it knew human voices.

i'm sure it was reacting to me as though it was being caught in some kind of way. >> what do you feel in terms of contact, in terms of emotion, when you have an incident, a moment like that, whether it's a bird of paradise, communing with the rhino or gorillas? >> it takes you out of the human condition, if i put it that way. i was on one occasion in the very remote part of northern australia, one of those odd incidences, the sun came up there and was this lagoon in front of me, full of the most fabulous birds, egrets and there were crocodiles and they were all busy doing their business. they didn't know you were there. no? and then suddenly the camera moved and it caught it into the

light and the whole lot took off. but before they werein paradise, you know, before humanity entered, that was how nature is, originally once was. that's a moment to -- revelation, recognition there is something beyond us. >> you did something. i think you weren't quite 90 yet but getting up to 90 and you got into this unbelievable submersible and went down to the seabed. >> that's a double and you get in and down you go. >> was it scary? >> not at all. >> other worldly? >> no. you can breathe in it. i have been in other submersibles. there i am there. i'm just as i'm sitting in an armchair watching television. it is better than television. >> it is better than television.

>> it's a huge privilege, fantastic. but because i've been in submersibles early, suddenly you have to worry about breathers and so on, but there was just a fantastic privilege. >> jusant to bring up this picture of the orangutan. what would you say, for instance, if you sat with the president of borneo or indonesia, where these are in deep deep danger? >> the president would agree with me. >> why is he allowing it to be in his forest? >> it's a difficult problem. they are wonderful creatures. look at that. >> let's listen to the sound. you say it's like doing a circus trick. >> she is seeing others doing it and copying.

that ability to imitate and use tools is something that started but brought to a much greater level among the apes. those two talents were ultimately to lead to the transformation of the world. >> so, again, the president of borneo, the president of indonesia, where their presidents are denying these animals their rightful habitats. >> i agree with you. they are different countries, difficult to control people. the will is there, the execution is the problem. >> i read around 1938, your family took in, i believe, two young jewish refugee girls from germany, who came over on the british organized kinder transport, to rescue them from that horror. tell me about that. you were a young boy then. what do you remember and what impact did it have on you? >> well, my parents felt very

strongly something had to be done about the jewish refugees. these two girls, irene and helga, they had an uncle in new york that had escaped earlier in the '30s. they were going to go to him. they could come to britain and then they had to get the papers and then they would go on to america. they came to britain and then war broke out. my parents said to me and my two brothers, boy, you have two sisters. and they will be with us for however long the war lasts. irene and helga remained half sisters, if you were, for as long as they lived. neither are alive now. but we saw one another very regularly. i learned a lot from them, you know. i certainly -- at that time, we didn't know about it and after the war we did.

that made them dearer to me than ever. >> you've been on the sea, you've been in the jungles and deserts, all over the place, even under the sea. you've also experienced zero gravity and haven't done it in space but in simulation. you looked like you were having the best time of your life. tell me about it. >> that was how you train astronauts. if you go up like that you feel the swing, in the stomach, as though you're lifting on from your seat. it was breathtaking and exciting. it was wonderful and we were doing it again and then the third time. after about five times, you think, i've probably had enough of this now. they said, i'm sorry, but we have to do 35 because we're doing testing of actually drugs for seasickness. we had to go through -- after 35

times i thought that was enough. >> that's enough. >> what did space say to you, the last frontier, in terms of our environment, our universe, would you have liked to explore that, too. n >> not really, not really. there are no animals there or flowers there. >> are sure? >> absolutely. if you think there's an orchid on venus, maybe a definitive venus but not on that venus. >> any regrets? >> no. it sounds terrible, doesn't it? i'm tempted to say yes, i'm sorry i spent time behind a desk. that was rew i its way but just glad i didn't do it the whole of my life. >> all right. weal be following you on your trip, sir david attenbrough, thank you very much. he's become a global icon championing our planet.

imagine the wilds of africa, when they were really wild, when we didn't know much about chimpanzees much less what they could tell us about ourselves until a 26-year-old english woman changed all that, armed with no university degree, no scientific knowledge, just curiosity and love of animals, jane goodall was sent to the bush from the names naturalist, lewis. that was history. she's the most leading authority on chimpanzees the first to discover they actually use tools like humans do. a national geographic about her and her work simply called "jane" is in the next round of oscar voting and it lists an extraordinary rich and compassionate portrait of her beloved friends in the wild. >> it take mess back to those

days more than any other documentary i've seen. i'm reliving those days, the best days of my le. because it isn't cenred as it was, shows all the banana feeding of chimps today we know shouldn't be done because they can catch our disease and back then we didn't know that. we live that magic time when chimps that were running away from me actually play with me. >> we have to bring in the singular achievement of your discovery, how close you got to them and how long you observed them and you discovered, no, we humans were not unique in a certain aspect, which is about tools. let's just listen to that. >> it has long been thought we

were the only creatures on earth that used and made tools. man the toolmaker is how we were designed. and here, you see tools. ♪ it was hard for me to believe what i'd seen. two days later i watched spellbou spellbound at the chimps. that was object modification, a crude beginning of tool making. never been seen before. >> it is extraordinary what you

say at the end there, it had never been seen before. you are the one who discovered this. when you think about that now all these decades later, how does it make you feel? >> it makes me feel how arrogant science was to maintain that we were the only -- they told me, when i went to cambridge to get a degree only humans had personality, only humans had minds capable of problem solving, only humans had emotions. how arrogant of us. >> you were a very young girl who came and was given this task of observing the chimps. you were not a university graduate, you were not a scientist and you come back with this revelation. d you stick to your guns? did people say, excuse me, who are you? >> the scientists did. fortunately i loved animals all my life. i had an amazing supportive

mother and had a great teach when i was a child who taught me absolutely these professors at cambridge may be very knowledgeable and learn ed and aerodite, but this teacher taught me when it comes to mind and emotion, they're wrong. that was my dog. >> there is a segment in this film enough to make even the hardest heart weep. that's when the elderly female, flow, dies eventually and her son, flint, just cannot -- cannot accept that. take the story further. >> he was totally dependent on her, even though he was 6, 7 years old, still riding on her back, still sleeping in her nest at night, still trying to suckle though her milk had dried up. when she died he couldn't cope. he went rather like a child going into deep deep depression.

in this depression he didn't eat and got sick and he died. it was one of the saddest times of watching him because i had known him since a tine 23y baby. >> we're in this environment where the president of the united states has an epa administrator who's looking to turn the clock back. they have scientists who essentially don't believe what you believe. that are not looking to protect the environment in the way you think it should be protected. how much of a mortal or planetary threat do you think we're under right now? >> it's a huge threat. the big difference between us and chimpanzees is the explosive development of our intellect. how is it the most intellectual being to ever walk the planet is destroying its only home. >> i want to rewind the clock back to 1957 or late '50s, when you went to africa to work for

the great primatologist, great anthropologist, lewis leakey. how did that happen and you were employed with that background? >> i was so in love and he married the wrong jane, really jealous. that's when i decided i would go to africa and live with wild animals and write books about them. >> you were young, a young girl. there weren't many young girls -- >> none. >> none. >> none. >> there is a picture, before we went on you said, oops, there you have my legs. >> my cover girl legs. >> you said, there are my cover girl legs. were you -- did you get a lot of that kind of guff for your looks and legs? >> i did. people saying she's only famous because of her legs and she's a

geographic cover girl. we don't need to take anything seriously. but then they took the film and it was proof i was not telling lie, chimpanzees were using and making tools and were doing all the things i described. >> hugo was the preeminent wildlife photographer at the time. and you fell in love. >> we fell in love. it was not surprising. he was a gentle person. he loved animals and always wanted to film in the natural world. there we were together. he was a perfectionist. drove me nuts. i'd say, hugo, look, nobody believe the chimps do this, please do this. i can't film it because the exposure will be wrong. arg! >> what do you hope this film does? >> i hope that it will inspire a whole new generation of young

people to understand how beautiful the natural world is, how important it is to save it. if it's necessary, okay, learn the science, so you can fight the planet. >> on that note, jane goodall, keep up the good fight. thank you very much for being here. >> thank you. >> that's it for our program tonight and my conversations with jane goodall and sir david. good-bye from london and see you again next time.

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