Wayne Pacelle on Jane Goodall’s Legacy: Compassion, Courage, and the Fight Against Factory Farming
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/02
Wayne Pacelle is a leading U.S. animal-protection advocate, author, and nonprofit strategist. He served as president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, where, under his leadership, the organization significantly expanded its policy influence and legal victories. Since departing HSUS, he founded and now leads Animal Wellness Action (a 501(c)(4) advocacy group) and the Center for a Humane Economy (a 501(c)(3) think-tank pushing humane innovation in business). He is an author of bestselling works such as The Bond and The Humane Economy, and has spearheaded campaigns to reform animal testing, industrial agriculture, and corporate supply chains.
In an interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Pacelle reflects on his decades-long friendship and collaboration with Jane Goodall. From first reading about her in National Geographic as a child to working alongside her in campaigns against invasive chimpanzee research, Pacelle highlights her moral clarity, determination, and transformative influence. He honours her tireless advocacy, her unfulfilled dream of ending factory farming, and her enduring message of compassion. Goodall’s legacy, he emphasizes, is both immortal and a call to action for future generations.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was your first time becoming aware of Jane, and how did that relationship evolve from knowledge to friendship?
Wayne Pacelle: As a child, my aunt gave me a subscription to National Geographic. That became a portal into the world of nature and the animal kingdom. I also watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, a 1970s program on wildlife and the people working to protect it. Those influences connected me to nature, and Jane Goodall, featured in National Geographic, became an icon and a pioneer to me. She reached millions through that platform at a time when media channels were fewer and National Geographic had an extraordinary reach.
At the age of 22, while serving as associate editor of The Animal Agenda, I had the privilege of profiling her. Looking back, I wish I had asked more about what her research revealed: chimpanzee warfare, violent conflicts, and survival pressures—the darker as well as the empathetic dimensions of chimp society. Her work raised profound questions about animals and about our relationship to them.
That was my first contact with Jane. Over the next four decades, we shared meaningful moments of progress. One stands out: an undercover investigation of the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana, a central primate laboratory, which helped expose abuses and build momentum to end invasive research on chimpanzees.
Together with Jane, we engaged NIH Director Francis Collins as the United States reassessed the scientific necessity of chimpanzee research after the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 review. In 2015, NIH announced it would end all support for invasive chimpanzee research and retire its remaining chimps to a sanctuary. That same year, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe declared captive chimpanzees endangered, extending full Endangered Species Act protections. These decisions marked the turning point.
You can’t harm them. You can’t vivisect them. You can’t cut into them for experiments. That reinforced the principle that chimpanzees could not be subjected to invasive research. Jane, Dr. Collins, Dan Ashe, and I celebrated that incredible gain. But Jane was always broadly minded — that was just one of the many campaigns where she added her moral authority and presence for lasting change for animals.
Jacobsen: Outside of the numerous prestigious awards and the research, who was Jane as a person?
Pacelle: She was a woman of extraordinary determination. Imagine going into Africa as a young woman in a male-dominated world of science, without the academic pedigree others had. She dared to describe the emotional lives of animals — something science discouraged at the time. That fortitude defined her from the beginning.
You saw it throughout her long life. She stood up to powerful institutions. She called out factory farming, animal testing, and destructive wildlife management. These are entrenched, multi-billion-dollar industries. They fought back against critics — I’ve been attacked myself through the years — but they hesitated with Jane because of her stature. She carried an almost angelic quality, driven not by money or fame but by compassion. That moral clarity gave her immense influence.
She was indefatigable. I understand that she was still on a speaking tour in California when she passed away. In a sense, she died at work — at her desk, so to speak. She never believed in retirement. Her life was a journey: spiritual, social, reformist. She ran through the tape and fell only after crossing the finish line. That’s the essence of Jane Goodall.
Jacobsen: What about the things she wished to see but never did? What remained unfulfilled?
Pacelle: She understood, as many of us in animal protection do, that factory farming is the most significant unresolved problem. Billions of animals are caught in a system that treats them as machines for producing meat, eggs, and milk. Their natural behaviours are denied. They are confined, often immobilized, and treated in ways that cause immense suffering as they are processed into food for billions of people.
She knew this was not the traditional way of raising animals. For thousands of years, animals grazed on pastures, felt the sun on their backs, and felt the soil beneath their feet. Industrial farming changed that — moving animals into windowless warehouses, crowding them in conditions that spread disease, concentrate waste, and amplify misery.
Factory farms fill the air with ammonia and waste. That is no way for animals to live. Jane saw this transformation in agriculture unfold over her lifetime. Born more than 90 years ago, she began her research in Africa in the early 1960s, just as factory farming systems were taking hold. They only grew worse. She raised awareness about it, but the issue remains unresolved.
She was deeply gratified to see chimpanzees freed from invasive testing, but she also wanted monkeys and other animals spared from laboratory use. There is a pathway to make that happen. Those of us who survive must carry forward the work she inspired and energized with her moral authority.
Jacobsen: How did you find out she had died? What was the immediate feeling, and how are you feeling now?
Pacelle: I was outside, talking on my iPhone, when I got a message from a colleague. My first thought was: Was she still working or travelling? The last time I saw her, she told me she was on the road for 280 days a year. That’s staggering for a nonagenarian. I’m 60 and I can’t imagine that pace, even though I try to stay fit.
My first reaction was that she had truly lived a full and purposeful life. When a beloved dog reaches 15 or a cat 18, I think, that’s a good long life. For Jane, it was an extraordinary one — a lifetime of service to the world community. Of course, there is deep sadness about her passing. None of us is immortal. But her memory will be close to eternal. I feel a mix of sadness, pride, and awe. She inspires me to work harder, to follow conscience, and to drive social reform forward.
Jacobsen: Do you have any favourite quotes of hers that stand out?
Pacelle: Jane communicated and directly. She wanted to reach children through her Roots & Shoots program. She wanted people to feel compassion and to understand the needs of animals. Her message was straightforward: be kind to animals, be good to the world we share.
She reminded us that we live on a small, fragile, blue-green marble hurtling through space, with only a thin zone where life thrives. We must protect that zone. Each of us can make a difference — whether by changing our diet, writing to lawmakers, speaking up in our communities, or supporting organizations that do this work on a larger scale. She embodied that, and she inspired others to act.
She believed in the value of science and the importance of respecting it. She was simply an incredible human being.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time today.
Pacelle: Excellent. Great to see you.
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