{"id":58010,"date":"2025-10-02T21:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T21:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/58010\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T21:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T21:43:13","slug":"conservationist-renowned-for-groundbreaking-chimpanzee-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/58010\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservationist renowned for groundbreaking chimpanzee research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dame Jane Goodall, the conservationist renowned for her groundbreaking chimpanzee field research and globe-spanning environmental advocacy, has died aged 91.<\/p>\n

The Jane Goodall Institute announced the primatologist\u2019s death in an Instagram post.<\/p>\n

According to the Washington DC-based institute, Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a US speaking tour.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost like an out-of-body experience when suddenly you hear different sounds and you smell different smells and you\u2019re actually part of this amazing tapestry of life<\/p>\n

Dame Jane Goodall<\/p>\n

Her discoveries \u201crevolutionised science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n

While living among chimpanzees in Africa decades ago, Goodall documented the animals using tools and doing other activities previously believed to be exclusive to people, and also noted their distinct personalities.<\/p>\n

Her observations and subsequent magazine and documentary appearances in the 1960s transformed how the world perceived not only humans\u2019 closest living biological relatives but also the emotional and social complexity of all animals, while propelling her into the public consciousness.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut there in nature by myself, when you\u2019re alone, you can become part of nature and your humanity doesn\u2019t get in the way,\u201d she told The Associated Press (AP) in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like an out-of-body experience when suddenly you hear different sounds and you smell different smells and you\u2019re actually part of this amazing tapestry of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goodall had been scheduled to meet with students and teachers on Wednesday to launch the planting of 5,000 trees around wildfire burn zones in the Los Angeles area.<\/p>\n

Organisers learned of her death as the event was set to begin at the EF Academy in Pasadena, California, said spokesperson Shawna Marino.<\/p>\n

\"DameDame Jane Goodall kisses Pola, a 14-month-old chimpanzee baby from Budapest Zoo that she symbolically adopted, in December 2004 (Bela Szandelszky\/AP)<\/p>\n

The first tree was planted in Goodall\u2019s name after a moment of silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any better way to honour her legacy than having a thousand children gathered for her,\u201d Marino said.<\/p>\n

In her later years, Goodall devoted decades to education and advocacy on humanitarian causes and protecting the natural world.<\/p>\n

In her usual soft-spoken British accent, she was known for balancing the grim realities of the climate crisis with a sincere message of hope for the future.<\/p>\n

From her base in the coastal UK town of Bournemouth, she travelled nearly 300 days a year well into her 90s to speak to packed auditoriums around the world.<\/p>\n

Between more serious messages, her speeches often featured her whooping like a chimpanzee or lamenting that Tarzan chose the wrong Jane.<\/p>\n

Tributes from animal rights organisations, political leaders and admirers poured in following news of her death.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Jane Goodall, our dear Messenger of Peace. She is leaving an extraordinary legacy for humanity & our planet,\u201d said United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr Jane Goodall was able to convey the lessons of her research to everyone, especially young people. She changed the way we see Great Apes,\u201d said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of Unesco, the UN cultural agency.<\/p>\n

While first studying chimps in Tanzania in the early 1960s, Goodall was known for her unconventional approach.<\/p>\n

\"DameDame Jane Goodall kisses Tess, a female chimpanzee, at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary near Nanyuki, north of Nairobi, in 1997 (Jean-Marc Bouju\/AP)<\/p>\n

She did not simply observe them from afar but immersed herself in every aspect of their lives.<\/p>\n

She fed them and gave them names instead of numbers, something for which she received pushback from some scientists.<\/p>\n

Her findings were circulated to millions when she first appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1963 and soon after in a popular documentary.<\/p>\n

A collection of photos of Goodall in the field helped her and even some of the chimps become famous.<\/p>\n

One famous image showed her crouching across from the infant chimpanzee named Flint.<\/p>\n

Each has arms outstretched, reaching for the other.<\/p>\n

In 1972, The Sunday Times published an obituary for Flo, Flint\u2019s mother and the dominant matriarch, after she was found face down on the edge of a stream.<\/p>\n

What the chimps have taught me over the years is they\u2019re so like us. They\u2019ve blurred the line between humans and animals<\/p>\n

Dame Jane Goodall<\/p>\n

Flint died about three weeks later after showing signs of grief, eating little and losing weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the chimps have taught me over the years is they\u2019re so like us. They\u2019ve blurred the line between humans and animals,\u201d she told The Associated Press in 1997.<\/p>\n

Goodall has earned top civilian honours from a number of countries, including Britain, France, Japan and Tanzania.<\/p>\n

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025 by then-US president Joe Biden and won the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer groundbreaking discoveries have changed humanity\u2019s understanding of its role in an interconnected world, and her advocacy has pointed to a greater purpose for our species in caring for life on this planet,\u201d said the citation for the Templeton Prize, which honours individuals whose life\u2019s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.<\/p>\n

The Humane World for Animals said Dame Jane\u2019s influence on the animal protection community was immeasurable.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer work on behalf of primates and all animals will never be forgotten,\u201d said Kitty Block, president and chief executive of the group formerly called the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International.<\/p>\n

Born in London in 1934, Goodall said her fascination with animals began around when she learned to crawl.<\/p>\n

In her book, In The Shadow Of Man, she described an early memory of hiding in a henhouse to see a chicken lay an egg.<\/p>\n

\"DameDame Jane Goodall goes through slides before making a presentation in Chicago in 1982 (Charles Knoblock\/AP)<\/p>\n

She was in there so long her mother reported her missing to the police.<\/p>\n

She bought her first book \u2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs\u2019 Tarzan Of The Apes \u2013 when she was 10 and soon made up her mind about her future: to live with wild animals in Africa.<\/p>\n

That plan stayed with her through a secretarial course when she was 18 and two different jobs.<\/p>\n

And by 1957, she accepted an invitation to travel to a farm in Kenya owned by a friend\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

It was there that she met the famed anthropologist and palaeontologist Louis Leakey at a natural history museum in Nairobi, and he gave her a job as an assistant secretary.<\/p>\n

Three years later, despite Goodall not having a college degree, Leakey asked if she would be interested in studying chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania.<\/p>\n

She told the AP in 1997 that he chose her \u201cbecause he wanted an open mind\u201d.<\/p>\n

The beginning was filled with complications.<\/p>\n

\"DameDame Jane Goodall plays with Bahati, a three-year-old female chimpanzee, at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, north of Nairobi, in 1997 (Jean-Marc Bouju\/AP)<\/p>\n

British authorities insisted she have a companion, so she brought her mother at first.<\/p>\n

The chimps fled if she got within 500 yards (457.20 metres) of them.<\/p>\n

She also spent weeks sick from what she believes was malaria, without any drugs to combat it.<\/p>\n

But she was eventually able to gain the animals\u2019 trust.<\/p>\n

By the autumn of 1960 she observed the chimpanzee named David Greybeard make a tool from twigs and use it to fish termites from a nest.<\/p>\n

It was previously believed that only humans made and used tools.<\/p>\n

She also found that chimps have individual personalities and share humans\u2019 emotions of pleasure, joy, sadness and fear.<\/p>\n

She documented bonds between mothers and infants, sibling rivalry and male dominance.<\/p>\n

\"Then-USThen-US president Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation\u2019s highest civilian honour, to Dame Jane Goodall in the White House in January 2025 (Manuel Balce Ceneta\/AP)<\/p>\n

In other words, she found that there was no sharp line between humans and the animal kingdom.<\/p>\n

In later years, she discovered chimpanzees engage in a type of warfare, and in 1987 she and her staff observed a chimp \u201cadopt\u201d a three-year-old orphan that was not closely related.<\/p>\n

Goodall received dozens of grants from the National Geographic Society during her field research tenure, starting in 1961.<\/p>\n

In 1966, she earned a PhD in ethology \u2013 becoming one of the few people admitted to the University of Cambridge as a PhD candidate without a college degree.<\/p>\n

Her work moved into more global advocacy after she watched a disturbing film of experiments on laboratory animals at a conference in 1986.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I had to do something,\u201d she told the AP in 1997.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was payback time.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and halted her in-person events, she began podcasting from her childhood home in England.<\/p>\n

\"DameDame Jane Goodall looks at one of the gorillas at Budapest Zoo in Hungary in 2008 (Bela Szandelszky\/AP)<\/p>\n

Through dozens of Jane Goodall Hopecast episodes, she broadcast her discussions with guests including US senator Cory Booker, author Margaret Atwood and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf one wants to reach people, if one wants to change attitudes, you have to reach the heart,\u201d she said during her first episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can reach the heart by telling stories, not by arguing with people\u2019s intellects.\u201d<\/p>\n

In later years, she pushed back on more aggressive tactics by climate activists, saying they could backfire, and criticised \u201cgloom and doom\u201d messaging for causing young people to lose hope.<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to 2024 elections, she co-founded Vote for Nature, an initiative encouraging people to pick candidates committed to protecting the natural world.<\/p>\n

She also built a strong social media presence, posting to millions of followers about the need to end factory farming or offering tips on avoiding being paralysed by the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

Her advice: \u201cFocus on the present and make choices today whose impact will build over time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dame Jane Goodall, the conservationist renowned for her groundbreaking chimpanzee field research and globe-spanning environmental advocacy, has died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-58010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}