Jane Goodall — "We need to reconnect with nature. We need to remember that we are part of it, no…"
We need to reconnect with nature. We need to remember that we are part of it, not separate from it.
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More from Jane Goodall
"The greatest threat to our survival is the destruction of the natural world."
"My dream is a world where humans and animals can coexist in harmony."
"I've been called a 'tree hugger' and I wear it as a badge of honor."
"We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on one another, we torture each other, we use our intellect to manipulate, we kill."
"We have so much to learn from the natural world. If we just open our eyes and listen."
About Jane Goodall (born 1934)
British primatologist who in 1960 began the longest-running wild primate study at Gombe Stream, transforming our understanding of chimpanzees. Closely associated with Dian Fossey (mountain-gorilla researcher) and Birutė Galdikas (orangutan researcher; together with Goodall and Fossey one of Louis Leakey's 'Trimates'). For an intellectual contrast, see Walter Palmer, American dentist who killed Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe in 2015 — Palmer represents the trophy-hunting tradition Goodall's life's work has been organized against — the colonial-era hunter-naturalist worldview that treated primates and big game as specimens or trophies, which Goodall's Roots & Shoots and Jane Goodall Institute exist specifically to displace.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Humans have developed a false sense of separation from the natural world, treating nature as something outside themselves to be used or observed. This quote urges people to recognize their biological and ecological belonging within nature — not as managers or spectators, but as participants. Reconnection means rebuilding empathy for other species and ecosystems, which is the foundation for making better environmental decisions.
Relevance to Jane Goodall
Goodall spent decades living among chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, dissolving the assumed boundary between human observer and animal subject. Her fieldwork revealed chimps using tools, forming social bonds, and experiencing emotion — collapsing the idea of human uniqueness. She later became a global conservation activist precisely because she believed this disconnection drives environmental destruction.
The era
Goodall has spoken these words across decades marked by accelerating deforestation, biodiversity collapse, and climate crisis. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw unprecedented urbanization pulling billions away from direct contact with ecosystems. Simultaneously, environmental movements were fighting to reframe conservation not as saving 'wilderness out there' but as protecting the systems all life depends on.
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