Jane Goodall’s wildlife research and her environmental activism may have taken her all over the world, but the famed zoologist and conservationist, whose death at age 91 was announced Oct. 1, was an expert on how to make a positive impact right at home.
Goodall, who founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 in part to help inform people about the need to protect animals and the environment, practiced what she preached in her personal life.
After Goodall left her native England in 1960 to study the daily lives of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania, she learned the animals, who are primates just as humans are, were sentient beings who behave a lot like humans do.
In the late 1960s, after learning more about the conditions of factory farms, which include practices harmful to both animals and the environmental, Goodall became a vegetarian, she revealed in a 2017 personal essay. She later became a vegan.
Goodall also thought carefully about the most ethical ways to spend each dollar.
In fact, when Goodall visited TODAY on her 91st birthday on April 3, 2024, she told viewers they can help make change in their personal lives by thinking more about the products they buy.
“I think the most important thing is for people to understand that every day we live on this planet, we make some impact, and we can choose,” Goodall said during the broadcast. “So we should ask questions: ‘This thing we’re buying, did it harm the environment when it was made? Was it cruel to animals … Is it cheap because of unfair wages or slave labor?’”
Buying ethically-made products, she added, “might cost a little bit more” but “then you value it more and we waste less.”
“Human waste is horrendous,” she added, “whether it’s food clothing or whatever.”