From grad students to seniors, young children to young couples, a diverse crowd came out to U of T’s Faculty Club on Nov. 4 for John Wall’s talk on “A Quest for Co-Existence: People and Other Animals in an Increasingly Human World.” Wall, who is director of the Jane Goodall Institute and a doctoral candidate in Carleton University’s geography and environmental studies department, appeared as part of U of T’s Centre for Environment seminar series.
As dusk fell Wednesday evening, Wall asked his audience: what are the processes and prospects of living with endangered species? How do people adapt to living with animals, and vice versa?
“[Dr. Goodall’s] research has opened up a new view into animal behaviour, and chimpanzee behaviour and ecology,” Wall said. “She doesn’t see a sharp division between what we need to for other species and what we need to do for people. As she often puts it, ‘Let’s make a better world for the Earth and all of its inhabitants.’”
A trip to Uganda as a volunteer development consultant shaped Wall’s research interests. Not only did he become more aware of complicated conservation and economic development issues in the region, but he also began to wonder about how people and animals co-exist.
“The encounter” was the motif of Wall’s talk. He pointed out that because not everyone can share the same experiences, each individual encounter is unique. Direct encounters as well as indirect and vicarious experiences can shape our position towards not only animals, but other social groups and communities as well.
“For me, an encounter with a chimpanzee, Sophie, changed my mind about people and animals. I was beginning to see myself in her eyes,” Wall said. “Subsequently I thought, ‘Humans are animals too, and just as our eyesight, hearing, smell, and touch are in continuum with other species, some of those species have capacities in those areas that far, far exceed our human capacity.’”
Recently, Wall has focused on the mutual adaptations of people and threatened species. He has investigated eastern wolves in the Ottawa Valley, grizzly bears in Canmore, Alberta, and North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy.
Wall said he hopes to continue working in human-animal studies that address conservation and development, and to examine how people develop their ideas of nature. “As we learn more about [encounters], and begin to see ourselves in the other,” he said, “it completely transforms our relationship and our desire to live a peaceful and successful co-existence.”
