Lady Jane’s Chimps: A Short Memoir
By Nova Brown
On October 1st 2025, 91 year old primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and activist, Jane Goodall passed away in California while on a speaking tour in the US.
Jane Goodall, an introverted young woman who was set to live away from all human beings and study wildlife, never would have seen herself becoming the ecological community’s Mother Teresa.
At age 26, she began her work in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, immersing herself in her work. She, over time, not only discovered groundbreaking research on chimpanzees, but befriended them. Jane discovered that human beings and chimps had more in common than 95% of shared DNA. She documented how chimpanzees would use tools, hunting cooperatively, and how chimps showed complex relationships and emotions. All of these, at the time, were uniquely human behavioral traits. Her research transferred our understanding of evolutionary sciences and what it meant to be human.
Her legacy extends far beyond her scientific discoveries. In the 1980s, Jane experienced a pivotal moment when she learned and saw how chimpanzees would be abused by zoos, hunters/poachers, and her fellow scientists. Stepping away from field research, Jane started to advocate for chimps. She later founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977, which remains one of the world’s leading advocates for conservation, wildlife protection, and environmental education. Her program Roots and Shoots was officially globally launched in the 1990’s that aided and educated young people on environmental and humanitarian issues.
Her activist work was deeply rooted in her desire to help young girls and women. In places where girls were often denied education and silence in policy and in the home, Goodall insisted that the only way to find sustainability in the environment, there would be equality in society. She supported community programs that provided girls access to education, reproductive healthcare, and economic independence. She argued that when women thrive, families, ecosystems, and societies thrive with them. Goodall inspired generations of girls to aspire for more, especially inspiring women to find their love in STEM.
Goodall earned titles impressing all nations with her work, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the French Légion d’honneur, the Kyoto Prize, and countless honorary doctorates. She remained grounded, often saying how she was “just a girl who wanted to live with animals.” She leaves behind a scientific, ecological, and humanitarian legacy that will endure for lifetimes. Jane Goodall will remind the world, leaders and citizens alike, that compassion is not limited by species, that humans are part of nature.
Until the day she died, he was tirelessly dedicated to save the world.
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
-Jane Goodall