Remembering our Jane

Every time I brush my teeth, I think of Jane who, decades ago, advised audiences to turn off the tap and save our precious commodity of water. I told her that story once and she laughed – imagine thinking of someone while you’re in the bathroom twice every day!

There can’t be many people in the world who have met Jane Goodall and don’t have a Jane story to share. She made everyone feel as if we’d made a special friend for life. Today, on what would have been her 92nd birthday, I’m flooded with memories of this remarkable woman who left a legacy like no other.

In October of last year, I was in the middle of a series of meetings when I took a quick look at my phone to check for any messages. A tsunami of them had and, for a few seconds none of them registered, as I scrolled down stupefied. Jane had died in her sleep.

So many people also felt that Jane would live forever. She seemed invincible – a Trojan of conservation, welfare and biodiversity, she was learned, intelligent and inspiring, and it seemed Mother Nature had lost her best friend.

Jane was generous and kind to a fault – especially with her precious time. Like so many, I fan-girled her whenever she was in town. When she came to Hong Kong in 2024 for a lecture series I think I went to every one that week. Just before she went on stage, one of the organisers slipped over to my seat and said Jane would like to say hello. In two minutes I was behind the stage, sitting down with her as she sipped on a small glass of her favourite single malt scotch – her ‘cough medicine’, she’d smile and say. That evening was about the fifth event of the day and later she was heading off to a dinner. She was dog-tired and yet, when she walked on to the stage, she completely owned it. For the next hour and half she had the audience enthralled.

Early the next morning I was sitting captivated as Jane spoke again. I don’t think she ever said the same thing twice. Oh, except perhaps that Tarzan married the wrong Jane – a favourite saying of hers! Every presentation from this inspiring trail blazer saw you leaving the lecture promising to do more.

During that morning she caught me on the back foot, as she often had in the past, and asked me to stand and tell everyone about meeting my first bile farm bear over 30 years ago. And, ever the perfectionist, she even told me off when I forgot to add the most important part of the story. That meeting with that most beautiful soul I named Hong, who reached out and touched me through the bars of a tiny cage, will likely lead to the end of bear bile farming in Vietnam this year.

Jane’s stamina was legendary and she hardly ever complained. Sometimes she hated her photo being taken – but this, to me, only normalised Jane and made me feel normal in return, as if there was no need to pretend. You just felt at peace in her presence, and reassured too that whatever we did to help this planet, however small, was important.

Our friend Marc Bekoff wrote multiple books with Jane and together the three of us shared a love of moon bears that would see both of them visiting and revering this species at our sanctuary in Chengdu in China. Marc would make me laugh in pictures of he and Jane together, where he always loved to wear a raggedy Animals Asia t-shirt that, in time, would fall off his shoulders in tatters.

When Jane visited the sanctuary back in 2005, our facility was crude, our knowledge still very much on a learning curve – but boy was our passion impenetrable. And I think Jane recognised that. As she watched a health check, on the cement floor of a hastily improvised surgery area, outside an even more ramshackle ‘hospital’, she asked for some water as our vet team worked on a gently sleeping, newly rescued, bear. Instead of drinking it, she dipped her fingers and sprinkled the bear’s forehead with droplets, christening him Mandela in recognition of the forgiveness of those who have spent their life behind bars. Then she kissed his nose and kissed mine.

One evening, years ago I wandered over to her table to say hi, giving her a little traveling plush moon bear for good luck. Years later someone told me that it had traveled everywhere with her since. But in that moment, I watched slightly puzzled as she reached down for her large handbag and rummaged around for several seconds, before triumphantly fishing out a little plastic chimpanzee and thrusting it into my hands. From then on, Tarzan has traveled everywhere with me too.

Jane and I shared the trait of being unshakeable optimists and I’ve thought more than once that her mother and my father could well have been friends. Her mother never took no for an answer and my dad would also tell me to hit whatever I was doing hard. From our shared bond with animals and love of dogs as our teachers, Jane found chimpanzees and I found bears. But equally, neither of us wanted to be pigeonholed to a species because we loved, and were enthralled by them all.

On our last zoom call we spoke together about the bears, and about her support for Animals Asia. As Mandela bear had since passed away I invited Jane to name another. Embarrassed, I heard her say Robinson and immediately pushed back, asking her to consider choosing a name after one of her chimps. Undeterred, she told me off, laughingly admonishing, “I cannot believe a bear would want to be named after a chimpanzee. That would be totally insulting!” and I learned again that you simply didn’t argue with Jane.

She taught me so much. Most of all, not to fear what you feel in your heart and not give a damn about what others might think. From an audacious dream that Jane helped to inspire, there are four sanctuaries caring for bears and elephants who all have ‘reason for hope’, as she would say.

I wish she could have been there to witness the last bear coming home in Vietnam. But somehow I think she’ll be with us all, remembering her belief, simply, in a ‘spiritual power’. She felt it most strongly in nature, as do I.

Someone said that Jane died with her boots on. She did – as vibrantly and as passionately as she had lived. I will never forget her. How can I, as her voice reminds me again in the bathroom, to ‘please, turn off that tap’.