conservationist

Jane Goodall Institute says primatologist dies in California during US speaking tour.

Jane Goodall, the British conservationist and primatologist renowned for her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees, has died aged 91.

The Jane Goodall Institute announced in a Facebook post on Wednesday that Goodall died of natural causes in California during a speaking tour in the United States.

“Dr Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist transformed science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of the natural world,” the institute said.

Born in London in 1934, Goodall began researching free-living chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960.

She observed a chimpanzee named David Greybeard make a tool from twigs and use it to fish termites from a nest, a ground-breaking observation that challenged the definition of humans as the single species capable of making tools.

In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which works to protect great apes and their habitat and supports youth projects aimed at benefitting animals and the environment.

Goodall devoted her later decades to education and advocacy on humanitarian causes and protecting the natural world. She was known for balancing the grim realities of the climate crisis with a sincere message of hope for the future.

From her base in the British coastal town of Bournemouth, she travelled nearly 300 days a year, even after she turned 90, to speak to packed auditoriums around the world. Between more serious messages, her speeches often featured her whooping like a chimpanzee or lamenting that Tarzan chose the wrong Jane.

In 2002 she took up a prominent United Nations role when she became a Messenger of Peace.

“Today, the UN family mourns the loss of Dr Jane Goodall. The scientist, conservationist and UN Messenger of Peace worked tirelessly for our planet and all its inhabitants, leaving an extraordinary legacy for humanity and nature,” the UN wrote in a post on X.

A controversial plan to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public land across Western states — including California — was axed from the Republican tax and spending bill amid bipartisan backlash, prompting celebration from conservationists.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who spearheaded the proposal, announced he was pulling the provision on Saturday night on the social media platform X. Lee had said the land sale was intended to ease the financial burden of housing, pointing to a lack of affordability afflicting families in many communities.

“Because of the strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process, I was unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock and not to any foreign interests,” he wrote in the post.

For that reason, he said, he was withdrawing the measure from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump has said he wants passed by July 4.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, speaks at a hearing in January.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

Lee’s failed measure would have mandated the sale of between roughly 600,000 and 1.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in 11 Western states, including California. The areas available for auction were supposed to be located within a five-mile radius of population centers.

The effort represented a scaled-back version of a plan that was nixed from the reconciliation bill on Monday for violating Senate rules. The initial plan would have allowed for the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of land managed by BLM and the U.S. Forest Service.

Lee’s decision to scrap the proposal arrived after at least four Republican senators from Western states vowed to vote for an amendment to strike the proposal from the bill.

At lease five House Republicans also voiced their opposition to the plan, including Reps. David Valadao of California and Ryan Zinke of Montana, who served as the Interior secretary during Trump’s first term.

The death of the provision was celebrated by conservationists as well as recreation advocates, including hunters and anglers, even as they steeled themselves for an ongoing fight over federal lands.

The Trump administration has taken steps to open public lands for energy and resource extraction, including recently announcing it would rescind a rule that protects 58.5 million acres of national forestland from road construction and timber harvesting.

Some critics saw the now-scrapped proposed land sale as means to offset tax cuts in the reconciliation bill.

“This is a victory for everyone who hikes, hunts, explores and cherishes these places, but it’s not the end of the threats to our public lands,” said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, in a statement. “Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have made it clear they will use every tool at their disposal to give away our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters.”

Chris Wood, president and chief executive of Trout Unlimited — a nonprofit dedicated to conserving rivers and streams to support trout and salmon — described protecting public lands as “the most nonpartisan issue in the country.”

“This is certainly not the first attempt to privatize or transfer our public lands, and it won’t be the last,” Wood said in a statement. “We must stay vigilant and defend the places we love to fish, hike, hunt and explore.”

Lee, in the Saturday X post, suggested the issue remained in play.

He said he believed the federal government owns too much land — and that it is mismanaging it. Locked-away land in his state of Utah, he claimed, drives up taxes and limits the ability to build homes.

“President Trump promised to put underutilized federal land to work for American families, and I look forward to helping him achieve that in a way that respects the legacy of our public lands and reflects the values of the people who use them most.”