Jane Goodall, a Life Dedicated to Conservation

I learned about Jane Goodall when I was taking the Ethology (behavior) class in my undergraduate degree. The professor had assigned a topic to each student, and I got a little slip of paper that said: “Leakey’s ape women.” Curious and having no idea what that meant, I got home and tried to figure what the assigned topic meant, and what I found fascinated me. Everything I read was even more impressive than the last thing.

Louis Leakey (1903–1972) was a prominent British-born archaeologist and paleoanthropologist, born in Kenya. His research, alongside his wife, Mary Leakey (1913–1996), was crucial for understanding human evolution. Leakey believed that to understand human evolution one had to “understand the past.” And that, in the absence of a time machine, one could learn from human tribes that were isolated from all traces of modern civilization and from the other “great apes”: the gorilla, the orangutan, and the chimpanzee.

Between the 1960s and 70s, Louis Leakey assigned three women the intimidating task of venturing into the African and Asian jungles to study three of the great apes (gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees). In 1960, the British Jane Goodall would enter the Tanzanian jungle to study chimpanzees; in 1967, the American Dian Fossey would go to the mountains of Rwanda to study gorillas (you may have seen the movie “Gorillas in the Mist”, based on her experience); and in 1971, the Canadian Biruté Galdikas would study orangutans on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. The three women became known as the “trimates.” Their research transformed the way primates were viewed, and showed how some natural qualities of women, such as patience, observation, and interpretation, were important in science, which at the time was dominated by men.

Jane with Dian Fossey to her right and Biruté Galdikas to her left

The Legacy of Jane Goodall

The story of Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, who never completed her undergraduate degree but eventually received a doctorate from the prestigious University of Cambridge, reminds us how much of trying to understand the world through biology comes from observation. Jane dedicated many years to studying a troop of chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania, where she observed them eating meat, socializing, raising their young, and establishing leadership hierarchies. However, her most significant observation was the use of tools in chimpanzees, when she saw how a troop member used a twig to extract termites from a termite mound, a skill that until then was considered exclusive to humans.

By the 1970s, Jane went on to dedicate almost all her time to conservation and quickly became one of the most recognized spokespersons for science, writing books, appearing in documentaries, and giving talks around the world. Her banner, evident in the titles of her later books, was hope. Jane fervently believed that humans have the ability to change the negative course of our planet’s current state.

Jane Goodall & Honduras

Jane Goodall. Image by Shawn Sweeney, People Magazine

Despite traveling the world, Doctor Jane Goodall never made an official trip to our country. However, in 2022 she wrote a public letter to President Xiomara Castro, expressing her support for the Café Solar initiative and the Yoro Biological Corridor, a sustainable coffee cultivation strategy that promotes forest restoration and conservation. In that letter she called for the use of the country’s Forestry Law to protect national parks, create jobs linked to the Corridor, and benefit local communities. In her letter, Jane mentions how her Roots & Shoots program, which seeks to raise environmental awareness in future generations, is working to establish itself in the country. Although first steps have already been taken in schools in Roatán through BICA-Roatán, initiatives like this remain an open field in our country.

Today, at 91 years old, Jane left this world. She was doing what she loved most, a tour of motivational talks that made her an icon and inspiration for countless people. In 2021, a journalist asked her if she would retire “once she fulfilled the commitments on her schedule,” to which Jane replied, “I have events scheduled for 10 years, I will die before I complete them. I will not retire as long as my body and mind allow it.”

Por: Stefany Flores y Diego Ardón, biologists

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