Famed Wyoming Photographer Looks Back On 25-Year Friendship With Jane Goodall

When Jane Goodall died Wednesday at 91, the world lost an iconic animal advocate and environmentalist. Famed Wyoming wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen lost a dear friend.

Mangelsen first met Goodall nearly 25 years ago when she came to give a presentation in Jackson, where Mangelsen lives. 

Even back then, she had long since established legendary status, mostly for her work with chimpanzees and other wild primates. Mangelsen told Cowboy State Daily that he was “nervous as hell,” about that initial meeting. 

It turned out that Goodall was easy to get along with, and not at all pretentious, he said. They quickly became friends as he took her on a tour of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in 2001. 

Over the following years, they met and traveled together numerous times. 

They made a yearly ritual of going to the Platte River in Nebraska each March to watch the migration of hundreds of thousands of cranes. 

The Jane Goodall Institute announced Wednesday that she “died peacefully in her sleep while in Los Angeles for her speaking tour in the United States.”

Mangelsen told Cowboy State Daily that he was struggling to process the loss. 

“It’s very sad for me. She’s just a special friend that I’m not sure what I’m going to do without,” he said.

‘I Want To See Everything’

Goodall, a British primatologist, rose to fame in the 1960s for her work with chimpanzees in Africa. She gained a reputation as a tireless advocate for protecting wildlife and the environment.

Though she was fiercely dedicated to her work and the causes she believed in, Goodall was easygoing and likable as a person, Mangelsen said.

“She had a warm and curious, childlike personality,” he said.

The world associated her with the primates of Africa, but Goodall loved all sorts of wildlife, he said. 

Early on in their friendship, Goodall told him that the first wild animals that enthralled her were mountain lions, which she called “pumas,” he said.

She also said that a dog she had when she was young, Rusty, inspired her abiding love for animals.

Mangelsen has a dog, Rusty, named after Goodall’s dog. 

As they prepared for that first tour of Grand Teton and Yellowstone together, Goodall was full of enthusiasm, he said.

“I asked her, ‘Where do you want to go,’ and she said, ‘I want to go everywhere.’” I asked her, ‘What do you want to see?’ and she said, ‘I want to see everything,’” he said. 

He mentioned that the best place to see wolves was the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone.

“I told her, ‘that’s a really long way.’ She said, ‘I don’t care. Just so long as you get me back here (Jackson) in time to get on a plane at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow,’” he said.

The ‘Jane Magic’

They saw all sorts of wildlife, including grizzlies, black bears and wolves, he said. 

“At that time, I’d never seen all three of those species in one day in the parks,” Mangelsen said. 

However, Goodall seemed to have a magnetic effect on wildlife. 

“We called it the ‘Jane magic,’” he said.

The Jane magic worked on people too, bringing out the best in them, he added.

He recalled during one of their trips to Nebraska, Goodall became concerned when she saw crop irrigation sprinklers. It seemed to her that farmers’ sprinklers weren’t efficient and used too much water. 

She asked to speak with the farmers, and a meeting was arranged, Mangelsen said.

“At first the farmers were just sitting there with their arms folded, as if they were thinking, ‘Who the hell is this woman from England, trying to tell us what to do with our farms?’” he said.

“And by the time she finished speaking, the farmers all wanted to take selfies with her,” he added.

Mangelsen said that Goodall had a similar effect on him when he became depressed or discouraged. 

“I think she inspired me to keep going,” he said.

“She would tell me, ‘We need to keep going. You have to make a difference, we can’t stop. We’re in this together. We have to do something every day,” he said. 

Tireless

Goodall practiced what she preached, Mangelsen said. 

He recalled that during one trip to the North Platte, “She came back with her arms full of trash that she had picked up from the river.”

Goodall was tireless, and all but impossible to keep up with, Mangelsen said. 

She always seemed to be traveling to speak and teach, or out in the field studying wildlife, he said. She barely took time for herself. 

Mangelsen said that Goodall once spent about a month by herself in his home, while he was photographing jaguars in South America. 

“She told me, ‘That 30 days was the most time I’ve taken for myself in 30 years,” he said. 

Despite Goodall’s advanced age, Mangelsen said she showed no signs of slowing down, so the news of her death shocked him.

“I really expected her to live to 100. I was just thinking, she was so tough. I never thought she’d die at 91,” he said.

Opening Worlds For Each Other

Mangelsen said he helped open the world of Wyoming wildlife to Goodall. 

She became a huge fan of the Teton and Yellowstone grizzlies. 

He said Goodall was particularly fond of Grizzly 399. She became Wyoming’s most famous bears primarily because of Mangelsen’s photos of her and the many cubs she had over the years. 

In turn, Goodall introduced Mangelsen to the world of primates in Africa. 

A portrait of a mountain gorilla in the wild is among the premier photos at his gallery in Jackson.

“There were many things I wouldn’t have done if I didn’t know her. She really made a big difference in my life in so many ways,” Mangelsen said. 

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.