The eternal legacy of Dame Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall has been a hero of mine for as long as I can remember. Gentle in her ways, I have never known a tougher, softer, more charismatic person whose entire life was taken up by the most difficult job in the world — understanding and protecting the wildernesses and wild denizens of Planet Earth.

Jane’s life story is well known. Possibly one of the most recognised and respected scientists of our age, she started out in her early 20s as a young girl with stars in her eyes, no formal training, plus a burning desire to experience Africa. An invitation to visit Kenya (chaperoned by her mother) turned out to be her ticket to the world she had dreamed of since childhood.

Seeking out the legendary anthropologist, Louis Leakey, Jane convinced him to offer her a job as his secretary. Soon, recognising a special spark in her, Leakey entrusted her with the task of studying chimpanzees at his research station in Gombe in 1960.

Like an iron filing to a powerful magnet, Jane immersed herself in the deep forests of Africa. Her childhood dream of living close to animals in their own habitat had come true. Leakey positioned her in Gombe, close to Lake Tanganyika, where under his watchful eye, chimpanzees became her life.

Careful to keep her distance to avoid impacting their behaviour, one particular chimp, christened David Graybeard by her, seemed as interested in Jane as she was in him and allowed her to approach closer as he went on nonchalantly with his own life. Fascinated, time and again she watched him purposefully insert grass stems into termite mounds to ‘fish’ for termites that he would gorge on. “Chimps in Gombe use tools,” was the stark message Jane sent out to a sceptical world of scientists who initially dismissed her ‘amateur’ observations, until National Geographic sent their photographers to document her claims and her large body of work on chimp behaviour.

Rumour has it she protested when Geographic photographers and writers began to focus largely on her personal story rather than the behavioural miracles she had witnessed, but in the end Jane prevailed and made her discovery known to her mentor Leakey, who sent back this historic telegram: NOW WE MUST REDEFINE TOOL STOP REDEFINE MAN STOP OR ACCEPT CHIMPANZEES AS HUMAN.

Ethology, or the study of animal behaviour, was not a very well understood phenomenon, but that was the subject of Jane Goodall’s thesis at Cambridge. She was awarded her PhD in 1965 without even possessing an undergraduate degree! She proved that the use of tools was not the monopoly of Homo sapiens!

The whole world began to stand up and take notice of Jane Goodall, who through her carefully documented observations, empathy and respect for the natural world sent tectonic shocks through academia. What was supposed to be a relatively short time in Africa turned into two full decades spent in the Gombe National Park. Her fame spread across the world as she continued documenting chimpanzee sociology that revealed playfulness, affection, displays of love, peaceful grooming… and conflicts between competing chimp groups capable of raw violence, sometimes even cannibalism!

Jane had her skirmishes with the male-dominated academia and beyond. Her next goal, wrote Lakshmy Raman, Executive Editor of Sanctuary Asia magazine, was “to defend a then unpopular idea: that chimpanzees have emotions, minds and personalities of their own.” That same year, National Geographic funded the Gombe Stream Research Centre.

That’s not all! Here is what The Atlantic, an American magazine,  wrote: This April, on the day before her 91st birthday, Jane Goodall recorded the conversation that would make her the oldest-ever guest on the podcast ‘Call Her Daddy’. Like Khloe Kardashian and Chappell Roan before her, Goodall sat in a plush pink armchair opposite host Alex Cooper, who lobbed personal questions. Cooper had warned her audience that the conversation “might be a little different” from the usual gossip about sex and relationships. But Goodall was willing to dish, recalling that in 1963, after the National Geographic Society began supporting her research on chimpanzees and she made her first appearance on the cover of its magazine, disgruntled male colleagues commented that “they wouldn’t put her on the cover if she didn’t have nice legs”.

Asked about this later, this remarkable woman responded with words to the effect that if her legs helped the chimps, she had no problem with that!

Dame Jane Goodall made a huge difference to the world of biodiversity conservation through personal appearances, documentaries, books and more. In 1991, the Jane Goodall Institute, with help from Tanzanian students, founded Roots & Shoots, to bring environmental and social issues to young people across the world. With six decades of field research under her belt, and decades in public service, uncounted recognitions and awards have come her way. In 2002, she was named the United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2006, Dr Goodall received the French Legion of Honor and a UNESCO Gold Medal Award. And in 2021, Sanctuary Nature Foundation honoured her with the Sanctuary Wildlife Legend Award. In my view, if anyone deserved a Nobel Peace Prize, it was Dame Jane Goodall.