The Passing of Jane Goodall

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, world-renowned primatologist, conservationist and humanitarian, passed away on October 1, 2025, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 91, of natural causes while on a speaking tour. Doing good to animals seems to have been in her blood. As reported, she passed a way peacefully in her sleep. A good soul like her didn’t deserve to suffer and thankfully she didn’t. We at RKD Pet shop express our own commitment to animals by writing up this small obituary to commemorate her in our thoughts and ethics.

Born as Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on April 3, 1934, in London, she followed a childhood passion for animals into the wilds of Africa. With the encouragement of anthropologist Louis Leakey, she embarked on her landmark chimpanzee studies in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream Reserve beginning in 1960. Through decades of close observation, she revealed that chimpanzees display personalities, emotion, and even tool use—findings that challenged long-held divisions between humans and other animals.

In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute to champion primate protection, habitat preservation, and community-based conservation. She also launched “Roots & Shoots,” a youth program to mobilize young people around environmental and social issues. Over her lifetime she earned honors including the Templeton Prize and (in her final year) the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dr. Goodall’s voice was tireless—not only in science but in advocacy: she pressed for climate action, animal welfare, and a renewed sense of human responsibility to Earth. She leaves behind her son Hugo, grandchildren, and a global movement inspired by her vision. Her passing marks the loss of one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most passionate witnesses to life—her legacy endures in every forest defended, every mind opened, every act of care for the living world.