Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 – December
26, 1985)
was an American zoologist, primatologist,
and anthropologist who undertook an extensive
study of mountain gorilla groups over a period of
18 years. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda,
initially encouraged to work there by anthropologist Louis Leakey.
Her 1983 book, Gorillas in the Mist, combines her scientific study of the
gorillas at Karisoke Research Center with her own
personal story. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name. Fossey was murdered
in 1985; the case remains open.
Called one of the foremost primatologists in the world while she was alive,
Fossey, along with Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas, were the so-called Trimates,
a group of three prominent researchers on primates (Fossey on gorillas; Goodall
on common chimpanzees; and Galdikas on orangutans)
sent by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments.
Life and career
Fossey was born in San Francisco, California,
the daughter of Kathryn "Kitty" (née Kidd), a
fashion model, and George E. Fossey III, an insurance agent.[1] Her parents divorced when she was six. Her mother remarried the
following year, to businessman Richard Price. Her father tried to keep in full
contact, but her mother discouraged it, and all contact was subsequently lost. Dian's
stepfather, Richard Price, never treated Dian as his own child. He would not
allow Dian to sit at the dining room table with him or Dian's mother during
dinner meals. A man adhering to strict discipline, Richard Price offered Dian
little to no emotional support. Struggling with personal insecurity, Dian turned
to animals as a way to gain acceptance Her love for animals began with her
first pet goldfish and continued throughout her entire life. At age six, she
began horse riding, earning a letter from her school; by her
graduation in 1954, Fossey had established herself as an equestrienne.
Education
Educated at Lowell High School,
following the guidance of her stepfather she enrolled in a business course at
the College of Marin. However, spending her summer
on a ranch inMontana at
age 19 rekindled her love of animals, and she enrolled in a pre-veterinary course
in biology at the University of California, Davis. In defiance
to her stepfather's wishes that she attend a business school, Dian wanted to
spend her professional life working with animals. As a consequence, Dian's
parents failed to give her any substantial amount of financial support
throughout her adult life.[6] She supported herself by working as a clerk at White Front (a
department store), doing other clerking and laboratory work, and laboring as
a machinist in
a factory.
Although Fossey had always been an exemplary student, she had difficulties
with basic sciences including chemistry and physics,
and failed her second year of the program. She transferred to San Jose State College where she was
a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority to
study occupational therapy, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1954. Initially
following her college major, Fossey began a career in occupational therapy. She interned at various
hospitals in California and worked with tuberculosis patients. Fossey
was originally a prizewinning equestrian, which drew her to Kentucky in
1955, and a year later took a job as an occupational therapist at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital inLouisville.
Her shy and reserved personality allowed her to work well with the children
at the hospital. Fossey became close with her coworker Mary White
"Gaynee" Henry, secretary to the hospital's chief administrator and
the wife of one of the doctors, Michael J. Henry. The Henrys invited Fossey to
join them on their family farm, where she worked with livestock on a daily
basis and also experienced an inclusive family atmosphere that had been missing
for most of her life. During her free time she would pursue her love of horses.
Fossey turned down an offer to join the Henrys on an African tour due to
lack of finances, but in 1963 she borrowed $8,000 (one year's salary), took out
her life savings and went on a seven-week visit to Africa. In September
1963, she arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. While there, she met actor William Holden,
owner of Treetops Hotel, who introduced her to her
safari guide, John Alexander. Alexander became her guide for the next
seven weeks through Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo,
andRhodesia.
Alexander's route included visits to Tsavo, Africa's largest
national park; the saline lake of Manyara,
famous for attracting giant flocks of flamingos;
and the NgorongoroCrater, well known for its abundant wildlife.The
final two sites for her visit were Olduvai Gorge in
Tanzania (the archeological site of Louis and Mary Leakey);
and Mt. Mikenoin Congo, where in 1959, American
zoologist George Schaller had carried out a yearlong
pioneering study of the mountain gorilla. At Olduvai Gorge, Fossey met the
Leakeys while they were examining the area for hominid fossils.
Leakey talked to Fossey about the work of Jane Goodall and
the importance of long-term research of the great apes. Although she had broken
her ankle while visiting the Leakeys, by October 16, Fossey was staying in
Walter Baumgartel's small hotel in Uganda,
the Travellers Rest. Baumgartel, an advocate of gorilla conservation, was among
the first to see the benefits that tourism could bring to the area, and he
introduced Fossey to Kenyan wildlife photographers Joan and Alan Root.
The couple agreed to allow Fossey and Alexander to camp behind their own camp,
and it was during these few days that Fossey first encountered wild mountain
gorillas. After staying with friends in Rhodesia, Fossey returned home to
Louisville to repay her loans. She published three articles in The Courier-Journal newspaper, detailing
her visit to Africa.
Research in the Congo
When Leakey made an appearance in Louisville while on a nationwide lecture
tour, Fossey took the color supplements that had appeared about her African
trip in The Courier-Journal to show to Leakey, who remembered her and
her interest in mountain gorillas. Three years after the original safari,
Leakey suggested that Fossey could undertake a long-term study of the gorillas
in the same manner as Jane Goodall had with chimpanzees in
Tanzania. Leakey lined up funding for Fossey to research mountain gorillas, and
Fossey left her job to relocate to Africa.
After studying Swahili and auditing a class on primatology (the
scientific study of primates) during the eight months it took to get her visa
and funding, Fossey arrived in Nairobi in December 1966. With the help of Joan
Root and Leakey, Fossey acquired the necessary provisions and an old
canvas-topped Land Rover which she named "Lily". On the way
to the Congo, Fossey visited theGombe Stream Research Centre to meet
Goodall and observe her research methods with chimpanzees.[10] Accompanied by photographer Alan Root, who helped her obtain work
permits for the Virunga Mountains, Fossey began her field study
at Kabara,
in the Congo in early 1967, in the same meadow where Schaller had made his camp
seven years earlier.[18] Root taught her basic gorilla tracking, and his tracker Sanwekwe
later helped in Fossey's camp. Living in tents on mainly tinned produce, once a
month Fossey would hike down the mountain to "Lily" and make the
two-hour drive to the village of Kikumba to restock.
Fossey identified three distinct groups in her study area, but could not
get close to them. She eventually found that mimicking their actions and making
grunting sounds assured them, together with submissive behaviour and eating of
the local celery plant. She later attributed her success with habituating
gorillas to her experience working as an occupational therapist with autistic
children. Like George Schaller, Fossey relied greatly on individual
"noseprints" for identification, initially via sketching and later by
camera.
Fossey had arrived in the Congo in locally turbulent times. Known as
the Belgian Congo until its independence in
June 1960, unrest and rebellion plagued the new government until 1965, when
Lieutenant General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, by then commander-in-chief
of the national army, seized control of the country and declared himself
president for five years during what is now called the Congo Crisis.
During the political upheaval, a rebellion and battles took place in the Kivu Province. On
July 9, 1967, soldiers arrived at the camp to escort Fossey and her research
workers down, and she was interned at Rumangabo for
two weeks. Fossey eventually escaped through bribery to Walter Baumgärtel's
Travellers Rest Hotel in Kisoro, where her escort was arrested by the Ugandan military. Advised
by the Ugandan authorities not to return to Congo, after meeting Leakey in
Nairobi, Fossey agreed with him against US Embassy advice to restart her study
on the Rwandan side of the Virungas. In Rwanda, Fossey had met local
American expatriateRosamond Carr, who introduced her to Belgian local
Alyette DeMunck; DeMunck had a local's knowledge of Rwanda and offered to find
Fossey a suitable site for study.[10]
Conservation work in Rwanda
On September 24, 1967, Fossey founded the Karisoke Research
Center, a remote rainforest camp nestled in Ruhengeri province
in the saddle of two volcanoes. For the research center's name, Fossey used
"Kari" for the first four letters of Mount Karisimbi that
overlooked her camp from the south, and "soke" for the last four
letters of Mount Visoke, the slopes of which rose to the
north, directly behind camp. Established 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) up
Mount Visoke, the defined study area covered 25 square kilometres
(9.7 sq mi). She became known by locals as Nyirmachabelli, or
Nyiramacibiri, roughly translated as "The woman who lives alone on the
mountain."
Unlike the gorillas from the Congo side of the Virungas, the Karisoke area
gorillas had never been partially habituated by Schaller's study; they knew
humans only as poachers, and it took longer for Fossey to be able to study the
Karisoke gorillas at a close distance.
Many research students left after not being able to handle the cold, dark,
and extremely muddy conditions around Karisoke on the slopes of the Virunga Volcanoes,
where paths usually had to be cut through six-foot-tall grass with a machete.
Opposition to poaching
While hunting had
been illegal in the national park of the Virunga
Volcanoes in Rwanda since the 1920s, the law was rarely
enforced by park conservators, who were often bribed by poachers and
paid a salary less than Fossey's own African staff. On three occasions,
Fossey wrote that she witnessed the aftermath of the capture of infant gorillas
at the behest of the park conservators for zoos; since gorillas will fight to
the death to protect their young, the kidnappings would often result in up to
10 adult gorillas' deaths. Through the Digit Fund, Fossey financed patrols to
destroy poachers' traps in the Karisoke study area. In four months in 1979, the
Fossey patrol consisting of four African staffers destroyed 987 poachers' traps
in the research area's vicinity. The official Rwandan national park guards,
consisting of 24 staffers, did not eradicate any poachers' traps during the
same period. In the eastern portion of the park not patrolled by Fossey,
poachers virtually eradicated all the park's elephants for
ivory and killed more than a dozen gorillas.
Fossey helped in the arrest of several poachers, some of whom served or are
serving long prison sentences.
In 1978, Fossey attempted to prevent the export of two young gorillas, Coco
and Pucker, from Rwanda to the zoo in Cologne, Germany.
During the capture of the infants at the behest of the Cologne Zoo and Rwandan
park conservator, 20 adult gorillas had been killed. The infant gorillas
were given to Fossey by the park conservator of the Virunga
Volcanoes for treatment of injuries suffered during their
capture and captivity. With considerable effort, she restored them to some
approximation of health. Over Fossey's objections, the gorillas were shipped to
Cologne, where they lived nine years in captivity, both dying in the same
month. She viewed the holding of animals in "prison" (zoos) for the
entertainment of people as unethical.
While gorillas from rival gang groups on the mountains that were not part
of Fossey's study had often been found poached five to ten at a time, and had
spurred Fossey to conduct her own anti-poaching patrols, Fossey's study groups
had not been direct victims of poaching until Fossey's favorite gorilla Digit
was killed in 1978. Later that year, thesilverback of
Digit's Group 4, named for Fossey's Uncle Bert, was shot in the heart while
trying to save his son, Kweli, from being seized by poachers cooperating with
the Rwandan park conservator. Kweli's mother, Macho, was also killed in
the raid, but Kweli was not captured due to Uncle Bert's intervention; however,
three-year-old Kweli died slowly and painfully of gangrene,
from being brushed by a poacher's bullet.
According to Fossey's letters, ORTPN (the Rwandan national park system),
the World Wildlife Fund, African Wildlife Foundation, Fauna
Preservation Society, the Mountain Gorilla Project and some of her former
students tried to wrest control of the Karisoke research center from her for
the purpose of tourism, by portraying her as unstable. In her last two years,
Fossey claims not to have lost any gorillas to poachers; however, the Mountain
Gorilla Project, which was supposed to patrol the Mount Sabyinyo area,
tried to cover up gorilla deaths caused by poaching and diseases transmitted
through tourists. Nevertheless, these organizations received most of the public
donations directed towards gorilla conservation.[16] The public often believed their money would go to Fossey, who was
struggling to finance her anti-poaching and bushmeat hunting patrols, while
organizations collecting in her name put it into tourism projects and as she
put it "to pay the airfare of so-called conservationists who will never go
on anti-poaching patrols in their life." Fossey described the differing
two philosophies as her own "active conservation" or the international
conservation groups' "theoretical conservation."
Opposition to tourism
Fossey strongly opposed wildlife tourism,
as gorillas are very susceptible to human anthroponotic diseases like influenza for
which they have no immunity. Fossey reported several cases in which gorillas
died because of diseases spread by tourists. She also viewed tourism as an
interference into their natural wild behaviour. Fossey also criticised tourist
programs, often paid for by international conservation organisations, for
interfering with both her research and the peace of the mountain gorillas'
habitat.
Today, however, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International promotes
tourism, which they say helps to create a stable and sustainable local
community dedicated to protecting the gorillas and their habitat.
Preservation of habitat
Fossey is responsible for the revision of a European Community project that
converted parkland into pyrethrum farms. Thanks to her efforts, the park boundary
was lowered from the 3,000-meter line to the 2,500-meter line.
Digit Fund
Sometime during the day on New Year's Eve 1977,
Fossey's favorite gorilla, Digit, was killed by poachers. As the sentry of
study group 4, he defended the group against six poachers and their dogs, who
ran across the gorilla study group while checking antelope traplines.
Digit took five spear wounds in ferocious self-defence and managed to kill one
of the poachers' dogs, allowing the other 13 members of his group to escape.[30] Poachers sell gorilla hands as delicacies, magic charms or to make
ash trays.[31] Digit was decapitated, and his hands cut off for ashtrays, for the
price of $20. After his mutilated body was discovered by research
assistant Ian Redmond, Fossey's group captured one of the killers. He
revealed the names of his five accomplices, three of whom were later imprisoned.[32]
Fossey subsequently created the Digit Fund (now
the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International in the USA) to raise money for
anti-poaching patrols. In addition, a consortium of international gorilla funds
arose to accept donations in light of Digit's death and increased attention on
poaching. Fossey mostly opposed the efforts of the international organisations,
which she felt inefficiently directed their funds towards more equipment for
Rwandan park officials, some of whom were alleged to have ordered some of the
gorilla poachings in the first place.
The deaths of some of her most studied gorillas caused Fossey to devote
more of her attention to preventing poaching and less on scientific publishing
and research. Fossey became more intense in protecting the gorillas and
began to employ more direct tactics: she and her staff cut animal traps almost
as soon as they were set; frightened, captured and humiliated the poachers;
held their cattle for ransom; burned their hunting camps and even mats from
their houses. Fossey also constantly challenged the local officials to enforce
the law and assist her.
Personal life
During her African safari, Fossey met Alexie Forrester, the brother of an
African she had been dating in Louisville; Fossey and Forrester later became
engaged. In her later years, Fossey became involved with National
Geographic photographer Bob Campbell after a year of working
together at Karisoke, with Campbell promising to leave his wife. Eventually the
pair grew apart through her dedication to the gorillas and Karisoke, along with
his need to work further afield and his marriage. In 1970, during her time in
Cambridge to get her Ph.D., she discovered she was pregnant and had an
abortion, later commenting that "you can't be a cover girl for National
Geographic magazine and be pregnant." Fossey had other
relationships throughout the years and always had a love for
children. Since Fossey would rescue any abused or abandoned animal she saw
in Africa or near Karisoke, she acquired a menagerie in the camp, including a
monkey who lived in her cabin, Kima, and a dog, Cindy. Fossey held Christmas
parties every year for her researchers, staffers, and their families, and she
developed a genuine friendship with Jane Goodall.
Fossey had been plagued by lung problems from an early age, and later in
her life, she suffered from advanced emphysema brought
on by years of heavy cigarette smoking. As the
debilitating disease progressed— further aggravated by the high mountain
altitude and damp climate— Fossey found it increasingly difficult to conduct
field research, frequently suffering from shortness of breath and requiring the
help of an oxygen tank when climbing or hiking long distances.
Death
In the early morning of December 27, 1985, Fossey was discovered murdered
in the bedroom of her cabin located at the far edge of the camp in the Virunga
Mountains,Rwanda.[38] Her body was found face-up near the two beds where she slept, roughly
7 feet (2 m) away from a hole that her assailant(s) had apparently cut in
the wall of the cabin. Wayne Richard McGuire, Fossey's last research
assistant at Karisoke, was summoned to the scene by Fossey's house servant and
found her bludgeoned to death, reporting that "when I reached down to
check her vital signs, I saw her face had been split, diagonally, with one
machete blow." The cabin was littered with broken glass and
overturned furniture, with a 9-mm handgun and ammunition beside her on the
floor. Robbery was not believed to be the motive for the crime, as
Fossey's valuables were still in the cabin, including her passport, handguns,
and thousands of dollars in U.S. bills and traveler's checks.
The last entry in her diary read:
When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and
concentrate more on the preservation of the future.
Fossey is buried at Karisoke, in a site that she herself had constructed
for her deceased gorilla friends. She was buried in the gorilla graveyard next
to Digit, and near many gorillas killed by poachers. Memorial services were
also held in New York, Washington, and California.
A will purporting to be Fossey's bequeathed all of her estate (including
the proceeds from the film Gorillas in the Mist) to the Digit Fund to
underwrite anti-poaching patrols. Fossey did not mention her family in the
will, which was unsigned. Her mother, Hazel Fossey Price, challenged the will
and was successful.[16] Supreme Court Justice Swartwood threw out the will and awarded the
estate to her mother, including about $4.9 million in royalties from a recent
book and upcoming movie, stating that the document "was simply a draft of
her purported will and not a will at all." Price said she was working on a
project to preserve the work their daughter had done for the mountain gorillas
in Rwanda, located in eastern central Africa south of Uganda.
Aftermath
After Fossey's death, her entire staff, including Rwelekana, a tracker she
had fired months before, were arrested. All were later released except
Rwelekana, who was later found dead in prison, supposedly having hanged
himself.
Rwandan courts later tried and convicted Wayne McGuire in absentia for
her murder. McGuire had returned to the United States following the murder, and
because no extradition treaty exists between the U.S. and Rwanda,
McGuire, whose guilt is still widely questioned, has not served his sentence.
Following his return to the U.S., McGuire gave a brief statement at a news
conference in Century City, Los Angeles, saying Fossey
had been his "friend and mentor", calling her death
"tragic" and the charges "outrageous". Thereafter,
McGuire was largely under the radar until 2005, when news broke that he had
been accepted for a job with the Health and Human Services division of
the State of Nebraska. The job offer was revoked
upon discovery of his relation to the Fossey case.
Several subsequent books, including Farley Mowat's
biography of Fossey, Woman in the Mists (New York, NY: Warner
Books, 1987), have suggested alternate theories regarding her murder including
intimations that she may have been killed by financial interests linked to
tourism or illicit trade.
Controversy
Fossey was reported to have captured and held Rwandans whom she suspected
of poaching and then stripped and beaten them with stinging nettles. After
her murder, Fossey's National Geographic editor, Mary Smith, told
Shlachter that the famed gorilla expert on visits to the United States would
"load up on firecrackers, cheap toys and magic tricks as part of her
method to mystify the (Africans) -- hold them at bay."[
Writing in The Wall Street Journal in
2002, Tunku Varadarajan described Fossey at the
end of her life as colourful, controversial, and "a racist alcoholic who
regarded her gorillas as better than the African people who lived around
them."
Scientific achievements
Fossey made discoveries about gorillas including how females transfer from
group to group over the decades, gorilla vocalization, hierarchies and social
relationships among groups, rare infanticide, gorilla diet, and how gorillas
recycle nutrients. Fossey's research was funded by the Wilkie Foundation
and the Leakey Home, with primary funding from the National Geographic Society.
By 1980, Fossey, who had obtained her PhD at Cambridge University in the UK, was
recognized as the world's leading authority on the physiology and behaviour of
mountain gorillas, defining gorillas as being "dignified, highly social,
gentle giants, with individual personalities, and strong family
relationships."
Fossey lectured as professor at Cornell University in 1981–83. Her
bestselling book Gorillas in the Mist was praised by Nikolaas Tinbergen, the Dutch ethologist and
ornithologist who won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Her book remains the best-selling book about gorillas.
Legacy
After her death, Fossey's Digit Fund in the U.S. was renamed the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
International. The Karisoke Research Center is operated
by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, and continues the daily gorilla
monitoring and protection that she started.
Shirley McGreal, a friend of Fossey, continues to work for the
protection of primates through the work of her International Primate Protection
League (IPPL) one of the few wildlife organizations that
according to Fossey effectively promotes "active conservation".
Between Fossey's death until the 1994 Rwandan genocide,
Karisoke was directed by former students, some of whom had opposed
her. During the genocide and subsequent period of insecurity, the camp was
completely looted and
destroyed. Today only remnants remain of her cabin. During the civil war,
the Virunga National Park was filled with
refugees, and illegal logging destroyed vast areas.
The Rwandan people adapted the traditional household baby naming
ceremony Kwita Izina to use with the gorillas.
Her 82nd birthday in 2014 was marked by a Google Doodle appearing
on its search homepage worldwide.
Biographies
Mowat's Virunga, whose British and U.S. editions are called Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey
and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa, was the first book-length biography of
Fossey, and it serves as an insightful counterweight to the many omissions in
Fossey's own story, being derived from Fossey's actual letters and entries in
her journals. Harold Hayes's book The Dark Romance of
Dian Fossey was published in 1989 after extensive interviews with people
who lived and worked with Fossey. Haye's book shows Fossey in a less positive
or romanticized light than previous accounts had done. The film Gorillas in the Mist was based on Hayes'
1987 article in Life magazine, as cited in the film's credits,
instead of Fossey's self-edited autobiography by that title.
No One Loved Gorillas More (2005) was written by Camilla de la
Bedoyere and published by National Geographic in the United States and Palazzo Editions in
the United Kingdom. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy
of Dian Fossey was written by the investigative journalist Georgianne
Nienaber and published in 2006. This account of Fossey's story is told as if in
her own words from beyond the grave. Fossey is also prominently featured in a
book by Vanity Fair journalist Alex Shoumatoff called African
Madness, in which the author expands on Fossey's controversial behaviors,
implying that Fossey provoked her own murder by way of her private and public
inflammatory interactions with people. The author also wrote a lengthy article
titled "The Fatal Obsession of Dian Fossey".
Films, television, and an opera
The Kentucky Opera Visions Program, in Louisville, has written an opera about Fossey,
entitled Nyiramachabelli; it premiered on May 23, 2006.
Universal Studios bought the film rights
to Gorillas in the Mist from Fossey in 1985, and Warner Bros. Studios bought the rights to
the Hayes article, despite its having been severely criticized by Rosamond Carr.
As a result of a legal battle between the two studios, a co-production was
arranged. Portions of the story and the Hayes article were adapted for the
film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver.
The book covers Fossey's scientific career in great detail and omits material
on her personal life, such as her affair with photographer Bob Campbell. In the film, the affair with
Campbell (played by Bryan Brown) forms a major subplot. The Hayes article
preceding the movie portrayed Fossey as a woman obsessed with gorillas, who
would stop at nothing to protect them. The film includes scenes of Fossey's
ruthless dealings with poachers, including a scene in which she sets fire to a
poacher's home.
In the 2011 BBC documentary All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis uses
Fossey as a symbol of the ideology of ecology,
a balance of nature and western post-colonial political exploits in Africa.
"Wild Kingdom: Reunion With the Gorillas" (1984), features
footage of Dr. Fossey interacting with the great apes in the Viruna Mountains
after being away from them for about three years. The documentary-style video
is narrated by Dian Fossey and Marlin Perkins. She shares some of her
observations and personal experiences, concerning the gorillas in the band.
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