Jane Goodall, a life that changed how we see the living world

On October 1, 2025, Dr. Jane Goodall died at the age of 91 while on a speaking tour in California. Her passing was announced by the Jane Goodall Institute and reported widely by major outlets. The world paused, not only to mourn, but to acknowledge how profoundly one patient observer in the forests of Tanzania reshaped our understanding of animals, conservation, and our responsibilities to the planet. 

The beginning of a revolution

In 1960, a 26-year-old Goodall stepped into Gombe Stream (now Gombe Stream National Park) and began the long, quiet work that would upend conventional science. Without formal academic training at first, she recorded what others had missed: chimpanzees fashioning and using tools, complex social bonds, and vivid individual personalities. Critics eventually turned into admirers; Cambridge University awarded her a PhD, and primatology was never the same again. From science to global stewardship

Goodall’s life expanded from field notebooks to a global movement. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977, an organization that continues her community-centered conservation work and protects chimpanzees and their habitats. She later launched Roots & Shoots, a youth program now active worldwide, inspiring young people to solve problems for people, animals, and the environment. Honors followed, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, but she wore recognition lightly; her focus stayed on storytelling, evidence, and hope. 

A voice the world trusted

Into her 80s and 90s, Goodall crisscrossed the globe, filling auditoriums and classrooms, reminding us that change begins with understanding. Leaders and citizens alike paid tribute in the days after her death, reflecting on how she expanded public compassion and galvanized action for wildlife and climate. As one obituary put it, she “transformed understanding of humankind by studying chimpanzees,” and then used that authority to call for a more ethical relationship with nature.

A legacy to live, not just remember

Goodall taught that careful observation can be radical, that empathy is a form of knowledge, and that hope is a strategy when it is paired with work. Her legacy endures wherever communities protect forests, scientists study without arrogance, and children decide the future can be different because they will make it so.

If you want to honor her, start close to home: learn the names of the trees on your street, reduce what you waste, support the places and people who safeguard wild lives, and encourage young voices to act. The line between “us” and the rest of nature has always been thinner than we thought, Jane Goodall spent a lifetime showing us how to cross it with humility and care. 

From Farmatuur

With deepest respect and gratitude, we honor Dr. Jane Goodall’s lifelong love for nature, a love that sparked a global movement and gently reconnected countless people with the living world. She is, and will always be, our greatest hero, a guiding light for everything we do. In every Farmatuur store we open, her portrait will grace our wall, watching over all who walk in, reminding us to stand in awe of nature’s quiet magic, and to protect it with courage and tenderness.