Jane Goodall Did a Final Interview

In one of her last recorded conversations, Jane Goodall boiled her life's message down to three words: "Just do something." A newly released video interview, filmed in Tanzania three months before the renowned primatologist died at 91 on Oct. 1, shows Goodall urging people to drop the idea that one person can't matter, reports the Washington Post. Speaking with Canadian tech entrepreneur and conservationist Dax Dasilva, she pushed back on the old "think globally, act locally" line, arguing instead that people should begin with concrete action close to home. Don't like the trash in your neighborhood? Organize a cleanup, plant trees, start somewhere, she said—and the act of doing will ease the sense of helplessness.

• "People come to me and say: 'Well, look at the world, look at the wars, look at the destruction of the environment, the poverty, the suffering, the destruction of the soil with industrial agriculture. … What can I do? I'm just one person,'" Goodall says. "We have this stupid saying, 'Think globally, act locally.' But no, act locally first, and do something."

Goodall, who rose from secretary and waitress in London to groundbreaking chimpanzee researcher in Tanzania, recounted how her mission widened in 1986, when she realized chimp populations were collapsing and forests were vanishing. Leaving Gombe for good, she set out to understand not only poaching and habitat loss but also the poverty driving them, ultimately concluding that human well-being and wildlife conservation were one fight. Her Roots & Shoots program focused on young people, but in the interview she stressed that older adults can pivot, too: many, she said, told her after lectures that they had "given up" but now intended to "do my bit."

On that Tanzania trip, Goodall and Dasilva encountered a relaxed herd of elephants in Saadani National Park, where the animals had once been nearly wiped out. Their rebound, Goodall said, is proof that "impossibly bleak situations can get better" when someone decides not to accept extinction as a given. Hope, she argued, isn't a feeling you wait for; it's something you build by acting. "Then you'll want to do more. And then you'll inspire others to join in," Goodall said.