“I think I must have first met Jane in the 1970s. My dad worked for the Gulf Oil company, and as part of their attempt to create a more positive face, they funded a number of environmental projects. Gulf sponsored a gala fundraising dinner for the WILD Foundation, due to be attended by Bill Oddie and David Bellamy, both childhood heroes of mine, and I unrelentingly begged my dad to be allowed to come. 

So I found myself, a little out of place, at a very big table in a top London hotel. A few seats down, sat a kind-faced woman, also looking slightly as if she didn’t really want to be there. She smiled at me and I smiled back. “Who’s that?” I whispered to my dad. “Oh that’s Dr Goodall…” he said “She works with apes and monkeys in Africa. I’ll introduce you.”  

At this stage in her extraordinary career, Dr. Jane Goodall was nowhere near as  well-known as she subsequently became, but, the work she was quietly carrying out laid the foundations for some extraordinary insights into our understanding of animal sentience and welfare.  

She told me about her work in the field in Africa, and how she felt much more at home there than at a table in London. She also let slip that she’d once been a Baroness. I can’t think how that came up in conversation.  When I told her I wanted to be an archaeologist and learn about the origins of humankind, her eyes lit up. “Then you’ll be just like me then! We’ll both be studying apes..!”        

At the end of the evening, she came to find my dad and I, fixing me in her eye and saying; “I enjoyed meeting you. I hope you keep up your passion for everything and I hope you’ll find some room in that for wildlife. It needs people like you.” 

I was probably ten or 12 years old but I remember that as if it was yesterday.    

Dr. Goodall was one of the elders, the wise people who we all looked up to and whose calmness, passion, utter determination and clarity made us all sit up. Someone told me once that at a conference she was speaking at, the interpretation service stopped about halfway through as the interpreters were sobbing and in tears at the passion she was speaking with.  

Years later at a wildlife crime event, packed with familiar faces from the entertainment industry, I spotted her in the background and went to speak to her. Her face lit up once again as I recalled the WILD event and even more when I said that I now worked for an animal welfare charity. “Well I remember monkeys better than I remember people..” she said. “But I’m very glad to know that you did what I asked.”  

I'll never forget my fortunate encounters with this incredible woman. Like countless other animal campaigners around the globe, I'll mourn her loss deeply. But we should recognise in this moment our responsibility to continue her legacy, to redouble our efforts, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Dr Goodall would expect nothing less.