Business
Name a Rhino
Uganda to host first Rhino Naming Ceremony as $11m Name a Rhino conservation campaign reaches milestone.
19 September 2025
This article first appeared in our Organic September 2025 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: Jane Goodall, © Vincent Calmel
Conservationist, humanitarian and tireless crusader for the ethical treatment of animals, Jane Goodall PhD, DBE, founder the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace, truly is a global force for compassion.
Jane’s work was recognised with 2025’s Lifetime Achievement P.E.A. (People. Environment. Achievement.) Award, a special award that goes to an individual whose considerable contributions and passion for change have led to exemplary long-term success in the field of sustainability.
Long-term success is something Jane is proud to list among her top achievements; the detailed study of chimpanzees she began at Gombe, Tanzania continues to this day.
‘When I began to research the chimpanzees of Gombe in 1960 I had a pencil, notebook and manual typewriter’, Jane reflects. ‘Now 65 years later, 26 Jane Goodall Institutes are leading the development of our many programmes around the world – that’s is not something I’d dreamed of in 1960!’
From early childhood, Jane’s dream was to study animals and write books about them. ‘I would have studied any animal’, she tells us; ‘It was a chance encounter with Dr Louis Leakey that led him to ask me to travel to Tanzania to study a remote group of wild chimpanzees.’
Observing chimps on very steep forested hillsides was never going to be straightforward, but the task was made even more challenging when the chimps insisted on running away. ‘They had never seen a white ‘ape’ before’, Jane muses.
The money Dr Leakey had sourced ran out, and when Jane arrived at Cambridge to study a PhD she was told that it was wrong to give individual chimpanzees names, and that she should have used numbers instead.
‘There are always problems’, Jane tells us, ‘but if you are determined and never give up, you can and will find a way to surmount them! Persevere, never give up and you will find a way to achieve your dreams.’
During her career in conservation, Jane has learned there is no point in working to save wild animals unless you seek to empower local communities as well.
She began the community-led TACARE programme in Tanzania to improve the lives of those living in the area, and they have since become partners in conservation.
The Jane Goodall Institute has replicated this approach in six other African countries.
Jane sees a strong link between conservation and humanitarianism; in addition to improving the lives of those who live in conservation areas, she believes education is crucial to efforts right across the sustainability sector.
‘We cannot save the natural world unless we address the needs of all its inhabitants’, she tells us.
Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots is an environmental and humanitarian programme that empowers young people of all ages – from pre-school right through to university and beyond – to become involved in hands on projects that benefit the community, animals and the environment.
‘It is now active in more than 75 countries and we have thousands of young people making positive change around the world!’, Jane tells us.
For Jane, hope is increasingly important to any dialogue around conservation.
‘If we lose hope we sink into apathy and nothing changes’, she explains. ‘All around the world there are incredible people developing ways to change the status quo and nature can recover if it’s given a chance. It may take time and it’s not always easy, but if we persist we will find a way to resolve problems.’
Many struggle with the sheer scale of the task ahead, and question the impact of one person’s actions. For Jane, the most effective way to take action for people, animals and the environment is to understand that our daily actions make a difference, and that it’s up to us to choose the kind of difference we make.
‘Turning off a tap saves water’, she tells us; ‘thinking about the product we are buying, where it was made and whether we need it – were those who made it paid fairly? All these daily decisions impact our world, and collectively our positive actions can – and do – make a difference.’
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