Remembering Jane Goodall, a Heroine for Eco-Tourism

Many around the world recently mourned the death of legendary chimpanzee researcher, Jane Goodall, who passed away in early October from natural causes at the age of 91. "Dr. Goodall's discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world," the Jane Goodall Institute said in statement on social media.

The British ethologist – a scientist who studies animal behavior within their habitat – had no formal training when she embarked in the early 1960s to study chimpanzees in what would become Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She skyrocketed to fame, thanks in part to a National Geographic documentary about her fieldwork, and used her celebrity status to advance conservation efforts for chimpanzees and other endangered species through her Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation.

A great proponent of ecotourism, she claimed that wildlife tourism — when done ethically — benefits both people and the natural world. "I know how people have been utterly changed by looking into the eyes of a wild chimpanzee. They are never the same again," Goodall said. Dr. Goodall retained hope that tourism could be a force of good and that traveling to remote wildlife areas could mark a win-win for people and animals, provided the benefits accrue to the local people so they become partners in saving nature – a philosophy Classic Africa and its partners heartily subscribe to.  

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make," Goodall famously wrote in The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times (2021).  Learn more about Goodall's approach to ecotourism here.

For more inspiration from this remarkable woman and advocate, explore Jane Goodall's "Hopecast" here.