ON A cabinet near my home desk, where I do most of my work, there’s a Barbie doll of zoologist and primatologist Jane Goodall, the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees. The doll was part of toymaker Mattel’s Inspiring Women series, released in 2022, which also included such icons as tennis champ Venus Williams, writer Isabel Allende, and poet Maya Angelou, among others. Jane is wearing her signature pair of khaki shorts and top, boots, binoculars around her neck, and she had a notebook in hand (although I’ve lost the notebook!). Most important, the dolls were made of 75 percent recycled ocean plastic, so with these toys, Mattel certainly walked the talk.
Beside Jane is a squatting chimpanzee, the famous David Greybeard (as Jane named him), holding a stick; he’s famous for being the first of the chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to approach Goodall when she began observing them in 1960. He was also the first ever recorded to use a tool, when he poked the stick into a termite mound to fish them out for food. Before then, it was believed that only humans were smart enough to do this (a conceit that remains to this day, might I add)—a finding that upended long-held laws on evolutionary science.
The author shows off her Jane Goodall and David Greybeard dolls. (Photo by Alya B. Honasan)
When the doll first came out, I debated whether to order one, since it wasn’t cheap, and it would have had to be shipped from the US. And then, a couple of months later, a package arrived from my cousin Marivic Buenafe, who was then living in Los Angeles. She had seen me on Facebook raving about the doll, so when I opened the package, I squealed with delight. Barbie Jane and David Greybeard have since stood on my cabinet, a reminder of everything every human should aspire to be as stewards of nature.
Much has been written about Jane Goodall and her legacy, especially after her death October 1 in California during a speaking tour. Born in 1934 in the United Kingdom, she serendipitously received a stuffed monkey from her father in lieu of a teddy bear. She was in her 20s when she met renowned primatologist Prof. Louis Leakey in Kenya, who, despite Jane’s lack of experience, saw the potential in the fragile-looking, beautiful blonde and arranged for her to go to Tanzania. Her work was eventually published in respected scientific journals, and in 1965, she got the ultimate imprimatur as the cover story of National Geographic, where she revealed the complex, fascinating social and emotional relationships of chimpanzees. She was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2002, and a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2004, among cartloads of other honors. In January of this year, she received a US Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Joe Biden. (Good thing, as the current POTUS probably can’t spell “chimpanzee,” and as of this writing, not a peep from him about her passing—maybe he doesn’t know who she was?)
Jane also wrote several books, from the ones specific to her experience (My Friends The Wild Chimpanzees, 1967; My Life With The Chimpanzees, 1988, and more), to more philosophical and general views on conservation and protecting nature (Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, 1999, a memoir of sorts, and Beyond Innocence: An Autobiography in Letters, 2001).
Jane received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Joe Biden in January 2025. (Photo from Getty Images/CNN website)
Why was Jane Goodall important? First, she broke ground as a female scientist when women were laughed out of scientific conventions. The way she lived among the chimpanzees and gave them individual names, not numbers, was considered “cutesy” by her male colleagues. She never referred to a chimp as “it,” but as “he” or “she,” or by names like David, Flo, and Fifi, as she did with all animals in her life—including her first dog Rusty, said this avowed dog lover.
Men raised their eyebrows even more when she earned her Ph.D—so that’s Dame Dr. Jane Goodall to you— despite the lack of undergraduate studies in the field, so important were here findings. In fact, rumors insinuated that Professor Leakey humored the young woman simply because she was pretty, but it has long been proven to be a genuinely productive relationship between mentor and protegé. Later, Jane would campaign actively to free chimpanzees in captivity—an advocacy that would segue naturally into fighting climate change to preserve their habitats.
She broke ground as female scientist when women were laughed out of scientific conventions. The way she gave chimpanzees individual names, not numbers, was considered ‘cutesy’ by her male colleagues
Thus, in a video interview for Inside Edition in 2022, after her Barbie doll came out, it was sweetly ironic when Jane revealed how delighted she was, since she only had the likes of Dr. Dolittle and Tarzan as her own role models growing up. “Here’s the Jane doll,” she said. “It will be so wonderful to have so many little girls playing with this.” Former US president Barack Obama was among the first to pay tribute to Jane after her death, noting how she “opened doors for generations of women in science.”
Second, despite the very real shadow of a Western monopoly of global scientific studies—in my limited conservation writing work, I myself have seen first-hand how a number of white scientists disregard traditional knowledge in favor of their own systems—Jane Goodall never intentionally threw her weight around, even if local leaders were understandably dazzled by her celebrity and persona, quite possibly to the occasional detriment of grassroots conservation workers. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), initially to benefit the Gombe research, and it now has 25 offices worldwide, including Singapore, where she gave a talk in December 2024 with another trailblazing female conservationist, marine biologist Dr. Sylvia Earle. In 1991, her Roots & Shoots environmental program for young people had a pilot group of 12 high school students in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who worked in their communities. The Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation, founded in 2017, was established to keep these programs going.
The famous picture of a young Jane in Tanzania, as photographed by her former husband Hugo van Lawick, a wildlife filmmaker and photographer (Photo from the National Geographic Creatives archive)
Jane has batted for community-run conservation, partnerships with villagers, valuing traditional environmental ways, and recognizing indigenous rights, as well as deferring to tribal leaders, according to the JGI website. Writing in a Reddit thread in 2017, Jane said of the JGI, “We went not as a bunch of arrogant white people telling the villagers what to do to make their lives better, but with a handpicked team sitting down, listening to the villagers, and asking them what they thought we could do to improve their lives. And that led to a very holistic program, which gradually grew, and we could introduce new ways of helping. This paid off handsomely. The people in the villages are now our partners, helping us in conservation efforts.”
In a BBC article, the United Nations stated how it mourned the loss of Jane, recalling how she “worked tirelessly for our planet and all its inhabitants, leaving an extraordinary legacy for humanity and nature.”
In Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Jane described a mystical moment at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris that had her thinking, “I must believe in a guiding power in the universe—in other words, I must believe in God.” Proving that science and faith don’t have to negate each other, she said in a later interview, as quoted by the BBC: “I don’t have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it’s enough for me.”
What you have done for the planet, Jane, is certainly much more than enough for us. And it’s our moral duty to keep going.
