Moms and Dads

Remembering Jane Goodall: The Voice of Mother Earth and its Denizens

by Kevyn Gohu
October 2, 2025

The world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees and conservationist, Jane Goodall, sadly passed away at the age of 91

On October 1, 2025, the world lost another great mind and mother in Dame Jane Goodall or Dr. Jane Goodall. Although she died of natural causes at 91 years old, the expert on chimpanzees and conservationist still left a great legacy. Her studies on chimpanzees and theories have founded and shaped many theories in zoology, shedding light on the phenomenon of human evolution.

But what many don’t see is how her passion for the primates also built her foundation as a mother to her only son, Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick, whom she affectionately nicknamed “Grub.”

“The most important thing is support,” Goodall told SheKnows in 2022. “You need to support your child in what they want to do. They might change their mind, but don’t try and impose what you want your child to do on them, just support them.”

Jane Goodall, the Working Mom

Most moms would have taken a step away from work. But Dr. Jane had a unique gift that made her the perfect advocate for the primates. She would lead the charge in their conservation after discovering the threats of deforestation and the ever-growing trade of wild animals and bushmeat. Her work would eventually build up into the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977.

So, it was no surprise that much of her family life was spent in the forests of Tanzania. However, she still took some precautionary measures. Boundaries between Hugo and the chimpanzee were held constantly, ensuring that they could co-exist. An interview with Fox News in 2018 revealed that her son was “never alone until he was three years old.”

In one of her more recent interviews, found in Vogue Philippines’s April 2025 Earth Issue, she had also lent her name to several causes, such as the transport of Mali the Elephant to a sanctuary in Thailand and even the #SaveMasungi movement. Her passion to conserve and support the environment comes from a responsibility she feels for the damage her generation caused.

“We are part of the natural world, we’re not separate from it,” she said. “We’ve compromised your future—the world you’ve been born into. It’s not fair. While there’s so much talk about tech solving the climate crisis, there’s an older and simpler way: protect our forests. It will take a long time for carbon capture so we have to protect the Amazon now.”

The Legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall

As natural disasters worsen, her message is more important than ever.

Many of us often define progress by the speed of technology, the ease of doing the mundane, and the time we seize back so we can spend time with our families. Yet, we often forget that many of these inventions and progressions come with a price. We rarely notice the payment because the original mother, Mother Nature, is the one who foots the bill for us.

Dr. Jane Goodall’s, or Dame Jane Goodall’s, passing may have been a great loss to those who were impassioned to pursue Zoology and its related fields. But she leaves a lasting legacy that calls modern families to remember and love the “mother” who has helped them thrive all this time: Mother Nature.