Good Bye Dr. Jane Goodall

Farm animals are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right. 

As such, they deserve our respect. And our help. Who will plead for them if we are silent?

She passed away yesterday at an age of 91. 

What a life!! We all know life is short but the impact of her work will save millions of animals for generations to come. 

Thank you, Madam. 

I am blessed to have lived during your lifetime and shared this planet amongst all living beings. 

Peter Singer's tribute: 

I first encountered Jane’s work through In the Shadow of Man, which I read soon after it came out in 1971. It broke new ground, showing chimpanzees as individuals with personalities, capable of thought, problem-solving, and planning. At the time, I had just become a vegetarian and was beginning to think about the ethics of how we treat animals. Jane’s work was thrilling, and it influenced me deeply. I refer to it in Animal Liberation, using it to rebut the argument that because animals cannot use language to tell us what they are feeling, we can’t really know what they are feeling. She showed, through her close observation of chimpanzees, that the basic signals we use to express such feelings as pain, fear, love, anger, joy and surprise are not specific to our own species, so we have little difficulty in recognizing these emotions in some species.

I subsequently met Jane at an event for animals, and was very pleased when she told me that Animal Liberation had helped persuade her to become vegetarian. When Animal Liberation Now, the 2023 updated edition was approaching publication, she was kind enough to endorse the book, writing: “I became a vegetarian when I read Animal Liberation back in the 1970s. Then and there I stopped eating meat. If I’d read this revised Animal Liberation Now, I’d have become a vegan much sooner.”

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Jane Goodall showed us how to look at animals differently, how to live with courage, and how to dedicate a life to something larger than oneself. Her legacy is in the forests she fought to protect, the animals whose lives she changed, and in all of us who were touched by her example.

Perhaps no single image captures that legacy better than the moment with Wounda, the chimp who turned back from freedom to embrace Jane. It symbolises the compassion, trust, and love that defined her work, and it will continue to inspire generations.

It feels right to honour her together, because although we knew her in different ways, her life led us both to the same conviction: that change is possible, and necessary.