Jane Goodall was a champion for chimpanzees, conservation, and population activism. The latter aspect of her work has been conspicuously neglected in recent tributes to this scientific giant.
by Leon Kolankiewicz
Pioneering English primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall (1934-2025) passed away last week at the age of 91. In the days since, numerous, well-deserved and glowing tributes have paid homage to her inspirational achievements and legacy.
Starting in 1960, this animal lover, with no college degree but imbued with a sense of adventure, curiosity and courage — the essential ingredients of authentic scientific endeavor — began conducting field research on wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in the East African country of Tanzania. For much of the time in those early years, she was a twenty-something woman alone in the wild.
Mentored by another scientific pioneer, paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey (1903-1972), Goodall’s findings challenged conventional wisdom about cognitive abilities long thought to be uniquely human. She discovered that wild chimps make and use tools, hunt cooperatively, and possess an array of complex social structures and emotions once regarded as ours alone. She shared her findings with the public in her best-selling 1971 book In the Shadow of Man and many other writings. The National Geographic Society supported and featured her work.
In her later years, Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute and became a respected advocate for wildlife conservation. In this role, she spoke out forcefully and often on the environmental perils posed by human overpopulation.
In a 2007 public forum in San Francisco, in her role as a U.N. Messenger of Peace, Goodall was asked if overpopulation was a taboo subject. In her calm, self-assured manner, Goodall replied:
It has been politically incorrect for a very long time. If you go to a global conference on those [environmental] issues and I’m there, you will hear me talking about the mushrooming human population growth that’s led to deforestation that leads not just to harm for the animals and the environment but the people living there too.
No question.
In 2019, speaking to a conference sponsored by Population Matters, an activist group of which she was a patron, Goodall said:
[Population] is one of the most important issues that we face today. It first hit me — really hit me — when I flew over Gombe National Park, where I’ve been doing chimpanzee research since 1960. And when I began, the little, tiny Gombe National Park was part of the equatorial forest belt that stretched from East Africa across to the West African Coast.
When I flew over Gombe in 1990, it was a tiny island of forest surrounded by completely bare hills and it was obvious there were more people living there than the land can support. It’s absurd really to think that there can be unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources.
As one who spent much of her life in Africa and traveled widely in her role as a conservation ambassador, Goodall raised the population issue in many different places and among many different peoples. She learned firsthand that ordinary folks were receptive to the idea of smaller family size and well aware of overpopulation pressures on nature. This contradicts the myth propagated by many overpopulation deniers that overpopulation worries only the affluent “Global North” and not those in developing nations most afflicted by the consequences of rapid population growth.
Goodall belonged to a generation of environmental pioneers who unflinchingly told it like it is on overpopulation — leaders like Gaylord Nelson, David Brower, Donella Meadows, Dave Foreman and David Attenborough. These influencers both acknowledged the population issue and advocated for addressing it. Many of their voices have fallen silent with the passing of the years.
We live in an era when support for international family planning has sagged. Incredibly, many prominent men with enormous megaphones are calling for even more population growth. Here’s hoping Jane Goodall’s common sense can inspire a new generation of population activists on behalf of a besieged biosphere.
This piece was originally published by NumbersUSA on 6 October 2025.
Leave a Reply