Jane Goodall, chimpanzee expert and Wildlife advocate, dies at 91; reason behind her death revealed

Jane Goodall, scientist and global activist, died on Wednesday at the age of 91, the institute she founded said. She was known as someone who turned her childhood love of primates into a lifelong quest for protecting the environment. Goodall died of natural causes, the Jane Goodall Institute said in a social media post.

"Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world," it said. According to news agency Reuters, the primatologist-turned-conservationist spun her love of wildlife into a life-long campaign that took her from a seaside English village to Africa and then across the globe in a quest to better understand chimpanzees, as well as the role that humans play in safeguarding their habitat and the planet's health overall.




Born in London in 1934, Goodall was a pioneer in her field, both as a female scientist in the 1960s and for her work studying the behavior of primates. She created a path for a string of other women to follow suit, including the late Dian Fossey.

As her career evolved, she shifted her focus from primatology to climate advocacy after witnessing widespread habitat devastation, urging the world to take quick and urgent action on climate change.

"We're forgetting that were part of the natural world," she told CNN in 2020, as reported by Reuters. "There's still a window of time." In 2003, she was appointed a Dame of the British Empire and, in 2025, she received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.