Environmentalists Must Work Harder after Trump Win

British primatologist and renowned environmentalist Jane Goodall said Thursday that those who care for the planet would have to work harder in response to Donald Trump's shock US presidential election victory.

The maverick billionaire, who defied polls on Tuesday with a win that has triggered protests in major cities across the country, has long worried environmentalists with his stance on climate change. 

"The people who say climate change doesn't exist, which Donald Trump says, this is so frightening," the 82-year-old Goodall told AFP when asked about Trump's victory at an event in Hong Kong.

"Those of us who care, one, must never give up and, two, we have to work even harder," she said.

"What's going to happen to all the progress we've made in the United States? I don't know."

Goodall, who has studied chimpanzees for over 50 years, is best known for rolling with the primates in the African wild and revealing the apes' true nature as never before.

She was in the southern Chinese city to promote her Roots and Shoots program, which started in 1991 and encourages kids to come up with ideas to help people, animals and the environment, and is now a major movement in nearly 100 countries.

Trump has described global warming as a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese government, and has said at different times that he would "renegotiate" or "cancel" the landmark climate-rescue Paris Agreement inked last year.