Updated 19 October 2026

Jane Goodall, who died on 1 October 2025 aged 91, never studied gorillas, yet the way mountain gorillas are researched, protected and visited today owes a great deal to her. Her chimpanzee study at Gombe in Tanzania, begun in 1960, set the model for long-term ape research. It was the first of three projects Louis Leakey launched, the second being Dian Fossey’s gorilla study in the Virungas. Her later community-based conservation shaped the approach now used around Uganda’s forests. This is what that influence looks like, and where you can see it on a Uganda trip.

Jane Goodall’s influence on gorilla research and African primate conservation

Leakey’s three apes

The palaeoanthropologist Louis Leakey believed that studying great apes in the wild could shed light on early human behaviour. He also believed that patient observers without academic training might succeed where others had failed. In 1960 he sent Goodall, then 26 and with no degree, to Gombe. Within months she saw a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard strip leaves from a twig to fish for termites. It was the first record of a wild animal making a tool, and it brought her worldwide attention through National Geographic.

Gombe’s success persuaded Leakey and his funders to back two more projects. Dian Fossey began studying mountain gorillas in 1967, first in Congo and then, from September that year, at the Karisoke Research Center she founded in Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains. Biruté Galdikas went to Borneo to study orangutans in 1971. The three women, sometimes called “Leakey’s Angels”, came from the same idea and often the same sponsors. Fossey visited Gombe before starting in the field to see how Goodall worked.

The method gorilla research inherited

Goodall’s key innovation was simple and, at the time, controversial. She stayed with the same animals day after day for years, recognised each one individually and gave them names rather than numbers, and recorded personalities, relationships and life histories. Many scientists then considered this unscientific. It turned out to be the only way to understand long-lived, intelligent animals whose societies change slowly.

Gorilla research followed the same path. Fossey habituated gorilla groups through patient daily contact, identified individuals by their nose prints, and recorded births, deaths and transfers between groups. The same approach underpins gorilla monitoring today. In Bwindi and Mgahinga, Uganda Wildlife Authority trackers visit each habituated family every day, and the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation keeps long-term records of individual gorillas. Habituation is also what makes tourism possible. The four-hour Gorilla Habituation Experience in Bwindi lets visitors join that slow process.

From research to people-centred conservation

In 1977 Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute. Through the 1990s her focus shifted from research to conservation, after seeing how forest loss around Gombe was isolating its chimpanzees. Her response, the Tacare programme, worked with villages on farming, water, health, girls’ education and land-use planning. The idea was that wildlife survives only where neighbouring people benefit from it.

That philosophy closely matches how gorillas are protected in Uganda today. Revenue from gorilla permits is shared with communities around Bwindi and Mgahinga, local people are employed as trackers and porters, and village groups run the walks and craft shops that visitors use. Fossey took a more confrontational line in the 1970s and 1980s. The community approach that later replaced it was shaped by many conservationists, and Goodall was among its most influential voices. Read more in our guide to how tourism saved mountain gorillas.

Goodall’s work in Uganda

The Jane Goodall Institute has worked in Uganda for about 30 years. Its focus is chimpanzees in the forests and farmland of the Albertine Rift, especially around Budongo and the Hoima–Masindi area, where chimpanzees live alongside farmers outside protected areas. Projects include snare removal teams, many staffed by former hunters, as well as community land-use planning, conservation education through its Roots & Shoots youth programme, and support for girls’ education.

The institute also helped found the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust. The trust runs Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary on Lake Victoria, home to orphaned chimpanzees rescued from the illegal pet and bushmeat trade. Ngamba is a short boat ride from Entebbe and easy to visit at the start or end of a gorilla trip. See our gorillas and Ngamba Island itinerary.

Seeing chimpanzees and gorillas in one trip

Uganda is one of the few countries where you can follow both of Leakey’s African apes in the wild on one itinerary. Chimpanzee tracking in Kibale National Park costs US$250 per person, rising to US$300 from 1 January 2027. Gorilla trekking in Bwindi costs US$800, or US$600 in April, May and November. The two parks are about a day’s drive apart through Queen Elizabeth National Park. Visitors who have read Goodall’s books often say the contrast is the highlight. Chimpanzees are loud, fast and constantly moving, while gorillas are calm, quiet and family-centred.

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