Dian Fossey

Dian Fossey
Born	January 16, 1932 San Francisco, California, USA
Died	December 26, 1985(1985-12-26) (aged 53) Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Known for	Seminal contributions to primatology
Scientific career
Fields	Ethology, primatology
Institutions	Karisoke, Cornell University

Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 in San Francisco, California – December 26, 1985, Virunga Mountains, Rwanda) was an American zoologist who undertook an extensive study of gorilla groups over a period of 18 years. She observed them daily for years in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by famous paleontologist Louis Leakey. She was murdered in 1985, by unknown assailants; the case technically remains open.

Along with Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas, she was known as a "Trimate" one of the 3 most prominent researchers on primates: Fossey on Gorillas; Goodall on Chimpanzees; and Galdikas on Orangutans.

Biography

Dian Fossey was born in San Francisco, California to George and Kitty Fossey. Her father was a US Navy sailor, whom her mother subsequently divorced when Dian was aged 6. Her mother subsequently remarried the following year, to businessman Richard Price.

Her father tried to keep in contact, but her mother discouraged it and all contact was subsequently lost. In the Price household, Fossey was cared for on a daily basis by the domestic servants, only allowed to eat with her mother and stepfather on Sundays and holidays. Age six she began riding, earning a letter from her school; by her graduation in 1954, Fossey had established herself as an equestrian.

Education

Educated at Lowell High School, following the guidance of her stepfather she enrolled in a business course at Marin Junior College. However, a summer on a ranch in Montana aged 19 rekindled her love of animals, and she resultantly enrolled in a pre-veterinary course in biology at the University of California, Davis. She supported herself by working as a clerk at White Front (a department store), doing other clerking and laboratory work, and working as a machinist in a factory.

However, although up to that point an exemplary student, Fossey found difficulties with base sciences including chemistry and physics, and failed her second year. She transferred to San José State College to study occupational therapy, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1954.

Fossey subsequently received her PhD from Darwin College, Cambridge, for a thesis entitled "The behavior of the mountain gorilla" in 1976. Between 1981 and 1983 Fossey lectured as Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Occupational therapist

Initially following her college major, Fossey began a career in occupational therapy. Interned at various hospitals in California, she worked with tuberculosis patients. After less than a year, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Living a few miles south of the town on Judge George Long's estate off of Bardstown Road in the servants quarters, she eventually became director of the occupational therapy department at Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.

Interest in Africa

Fossey became friends with Mrs Mary White "Gaynee" Henry, secretary to the chief administrator at the hospital and wife of one of the doctors Dr. Michael J. Henry, who lived on Summit Avenue, Louisville. Gaynee Henry showed Fossey pictures of the couples tours of Africa, which kindled her interests. After having to turn down an offer to join the couple on an Africa tour due to her inability to raise the finance, in 1963 she borrowed $8,000 (1 year's salary) from Gaynee Henry, and went on a seven week visit to Africa.

In September 1963, she arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. While there, she met actor William Holden who owned Treetops Hotel, who introduced her to white British hunter John Alexander. Alexander became her guide for the next seven weeks through Kenya, Tanganyika, Zaire, and Rhodesia. Referred to as "white hunter" in her diary, 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 Ngorongoro Crater, 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. Mikeno in Congo, where in 1959, American zoologist George Schaller had carried out a pioneering study of the mountain gorilla. At Olduvai Gorge, Fossey met Dr. Leakey and his wife while they were examining the area for hominid fossils. Louis talked to Fossey about the work of Jane Goodall and the importance of long term research of the great apes, work pioneered by George Schaller.

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 subsequently wrote and had published three articles in The Courier-Journal newspaper, detailing her visit to Africa.

Congo

In 1966, Fossey attended a lecture by Dr Leakey at the University of Louisville on the origin of man. Leakey stressed during the lecture that someone should study the most humanoid animal "The Great Ape." Approached afterwards, Leakey agreed to let Fossey be his protégé and get her research funds, but stressed her need for a prophylactic appendectomy. Undertaken the following week by Dr. Orville Clark and Dr. Bourbon Canfield at the old Methodist Evangelical Hospital, she woke up in the recovery room hollering "I hope the gorillas are worth this."

After studying Swahili for the eight months it took to get her visa and funding agreed, Fossey arrived in Nairobi in December 1966. With the help of Joan Root, she acquired the necessary provisions and an old canvas-topped Land Rover which she named “Lily.” On the way to the Congo, Fossey visited the Gombe Stream Research Centre to meet Jane Goodall, and observe her research methods with chimpanzees.

Accompanied by Alan Root who helped her obtained work permits for the Virunga mountains, Fossey began her field study at Kabara, in the Zaire in early 1967. Root taught her basic gorilla tracking, and his tracker Sanwekwe later 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 couldn't get close to them. She eventually found that mimicking their actions and making grunting sounds assured them, together with submissive beviour and eating of the local celery plant. 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 up 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. With resultant political upheaval involving battles breaking out, there a rebellion in the Kivu Province.

On July 9, 1967, soldiers arrived at the camp to escort them 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.

Rwanda and Karisoke

Advised by the Ugandan authorities not to return to Congo, after meeting Dr 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 Rosamond Carr who introduced her to Belgian Alyette DeMunck, who through her knowledge of Rwanda offered to find Fossey a suitable site.

On September 24, 1967, Fossey founded the Karisoke Research Center, a remote rainforest camp nestled in Ruhengeri province. “Kari” for the first four letters of Mt. Karisimbi that overlooked her camp from the south, and “soke” for the last four letters of Mt. 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 as by locals as Nyirmachabelli, roughly translated as "The woman who lives alone on the mountain."

When her photograph, taken by Bob Campbell, appeared on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in January 1970, Fossey became an international celebrity, bringing massive publicity to her cause of saving the mountain gorilla from extinction, as well as convincing the general public that gorillas are not as bad as they are sometimes depicted in movies and books. Photographs showing the gorilla "Peanuts" touching Fossey's hand depicted the first recorded peaceful contact between a human being and a wild gorilla. Her extraordinary rapport with animals and her background as an occupational therapist brushed away the Hollywood "King Kong" myth of an aggressive, savage beast.

Fossey strongly supported "active conservation"—for example anti-poaching patrols and preservation of natural habitat—as opposed to "theoretical conservation", which includes the promotion of tourism. She was also strongly opposed to zoos, as the capture of individual animals all too often involves the killing of their family members. Many animals do not survive the transport, and the breeding rate and survival rate in zoos are often lower than in the wild. For example, in 1978, Fossey attempted to prevent the export of two young gorillas, Coco and Pucker, from Rwanda to the Cologne, Germany, zoo. She learned that, during their capture, 20 adult gorillas had been killed. The two captives were given to Fossey by their captors for treatment of injuries suffered during capture and captivity. With considerable effort, she restored them to some approximation of health. They 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.

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.

Death of Digit

Main article: Digit Fund

During the daytime of New Year's Eve 1977, Fossey's favourite gorilla, Digit, was killed by poachers. As guard of study group 4, he had held off six poachers and their dogs who ran into the group within their antelope traplines. Digit took five spear wounds, yet in ferocious self-defense managed to kill one of the poachers' dogs, allowing the other 13 members of his group to escape. He was subsequently decapitated for the price of $20. After his mutilated body was discovered by Ph.D. research student Ian Redmond, Fossey's group captured one of the killers. He revealed the names of his five accomplices, and all but two were later imprisoned.

Fossey resultantly created the Digit Fund, with the intent to raise money for anti-poaching patrols. Digit's death had a profound affect on her approach to conservationism, and she commented that "I have tried not to allow myself to think of Digit's anguish, pain and the total comprehension he must have suffered in knowing what humans were doing to him. From that moment on, I came to live within an insulated part of myself."

Fossey became more intense in protecting the gorillas, and now employed new and more direct tactics, by: cutting animal traps almost as soon as they were set; frightened, captured and beat the poachers; hold their cattle for ransom; burn their crops and even their houses. Fossey also constantly challenged the local officials to enforce the law and assist her. But after Redmond was almost killed confronting poachers, requiring medical attention in England, Fossey was advised by Rwandan officials to desist from cutting traps, counsel she reluctantly obeyed. Although she tried new tactics of education and voodoo masks, by the end of 1978, two of the original four study groups of gorillas from 1967 had disintegrated.

Cornell University and autobiography

By 1980, Fossey was recognised 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."

Dr Fossey lectured as professor at Cornell University in 1981-1983. Her bestselling boolGorillas 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 of all time.

Personal life

While in Louisville, Mrs. Gaynee Henry introduced Fossey to her visiting friend Father M. Raymond, a Trappist monk who wrote The Man Who Got Even With God. Fossey called him the most exciting and stimulating man she ever met, and the pair subsequently became lovers.

After returning to Louisville, she met and later became engaged to Alexea Forrester, related to a family she met in Africa. After leaving for Africa in 1966, in later interviews Fossey would comment that "I left my appendix and fiancé in the states."

Fossey then became involved with National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell after a year of working together at Karisoke with Campbell promising to leave his wife. But eventually the pair grew apart through her dedication to the gorillas and Karisoke, and his need to work further afield. In 1970, during her time in Cambridge to get her Ph.D., she discovered she was pregnant and got an abortion, later commenting that "you can't be a cover girl for National Geographic Magazine and be pregnant." Fossey grew depressive and highly dependent on alcohol for a period after their relationship ended in 1972.

During her relationship with Campbell, Fossey had a second abortion. Subsequently hemorrhaging severely, she was treated in the town of Ruhengeri by Dr. Pete Weiss, 1hours drive away. Dr. Weiss became a regular visitor to Karisoke, but Fossey again subsequently refused to leave the mountains and her gorillas.

Death

Fossey returned to Rwanda in 1985, her health declining further as she drank heavily and smoked three packets of cigarettes daily. She became reclusive from both the community and her students, treating all with disdain and abuse. She would not hire local natives to help with research, and did not use local veterinarians when animal sickened. The Wall Street Journal in March 2002 described Fossey at the end of her life as "colourful, controversial and a racist alcoholic, who loved her gorillas more than the people."

As a result of the void with the community at both local and national level, Karisoke Research Center declined, with equipment not repaired, and the study library available only when Dian permitted.

Fossey was found murdered in the bedroom of her cabin on December 26, 1985. The last entry in her diary read:

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate on the preservation of the future

Clothed in her pyjamas, Fossey's skull had been split by a panga (machete), a tool widely used by poachers, which she had confiscated years earlier and hung as a decoration on the wall of her living room adjacent to her bedroom. Fossey was found dead beside her bed, with her gun beside her but the ammunition didn't fit the weapon. The cabin showed signs of a struggle as there was broken glass on the floor and tables and other furniture overturned. All Fossey's valuables were still in the cabin - thousands of dollars in cash and travelers' checks, and photo equipment remained untouched. She was 2 metres (6.6 ft) away from a hole cut in the wall of the cabin on the day of her murder. Despite the violent nature of the wound, there was relatively little blood in her bedroom, leading some to believe that she was killed before the head-wound was inflicted, as head wounds, even superficial ones, usually bleed profusely.

Fossey is interred at Karisoke, in a site that she herself had constructed for her dead gorilla friends. She was buried in the gorilla graveyard next to Digit, and near many gorillas killed by poachers.

Fossey's will stated that all her money (including proceeds from the movie) should go to the Digit Fund to finance anti-poaching patrols. However, her mother Kitty Price, challenged the will and won.

Opponents and theories on murder

After Fossey's death, her entire staff, including Rwelekana, a tracker she had fired months before, were arrested. All but Rwelekana, who was later found dead in prison, supposedly having hanged himself, were released.

On the night of Fossey's murder, a metal sheeting from her bedroom was removed at the only place of the bedroom where it would not have been obstructed by her furniture, which supports the case that the murder was committed by someone who was familiar with the cabin and her day-to-day activities. The sheeting of her cabin, which was normally securely locked at night, might also have been removed after the murder to make it appear as if the killing was the work of poachers.

Farley Mowat's biography of Fossey, Woman in the Mists, suggests that it is unlikely that she was killed by poachers. According to Mowat, it is unlikely that a stranger could have entered her cabin by cutting a hole and then going to her living-room to get the panga, giving Fossey time to escape; the amount of untouched valuables also makes it unlikely the act of a poor poacher. According to the book, poachers would have been more likely to kill her in the forest, with little risk to themselves. Mowat hence believes that she was killed by those who viewed her as an impediment to the touristic and financial exploitation of the gorillas.

According to Linda Melvern in her book Conspiracy to Murder, Protais Zigiranyirazo, Préfet of Ruhengeri, animal trader and Rwanda's ex-president's brother-in-law, could also have been "implicated in the murder of Dian Fossey in 1985." Quoting Nick Gordon, author of a book about Fossey's death, "Another reason why she might have been murdered is that she knew too much about the illegal trafficking by Rwanda's ruling clique." Protais Zigiranyirazo also had strong financial interests in gorilla tourism.

Fossey was portrayed by her detractors as eccentric and obsessed, and all kinds of stories circulated about her. According to her letters, ORTPN, the World Wildlife Fund, African Wildlife Foundation, FPS, 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. The public often believed their money would go to Fossey, who was struggling to finance her anti-poaching 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."

Many of the organizations that opposed Fossey, including ORTPN (the Rwandan tourism office) and other wildlife organizations, used and continue to use her name for their financial gain up to this day. Weeks before her death, ORTPN refused to renew her visa, and pressure on Fossey was mounting. However, Fossey managed to obtain a special two-year visa through Augustin Nduwayezu, a benevolent Secretary-General in charge of immigration. Mowat believes that the extension of her visa amounted to a de facto death warrant.

Months before her death, Fossey signed a $1,000,000 contract with Universal Studios for a movie that was to be based on her book, Gorillas in the Mist. The prospect that her work would be funded far into the future may have contributed to her demise.

The Wall Street Journal in March 2002 described Fossey at the end of her life as "colourful, controversial and a racist alcoholic, who loved her gorillas more than the people."

The director of ORTPN, Habirameye, who refused to renew Fossey's last visa request, insisted at the filming of Gorillas in the Mist that there should be as little about the death scene as possible.

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.

The Digit Fund in the UK, which Fossey lost to the Fauna Protection League (FPS), was also renamed after her as "The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund UK" (DFGF-UK). However she never received any funds collected in her name by the FPS; and although some conservationists associated with the FPS wanted her to be removed from Rwanda FPS and the DFGF-UK (which renamed itself The Gorilla Organization in 2006), they continue to use her name up to this day for their financial purposes (including promotion of tourism, which Fossey opposed, and the financing of local bureaucrats).

One of Fossey's friends, Shirley McGreal, 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 Rwanda genocide, Karisoke was directed by former students who had opposed her. During the genocide, the camp was completely looted and destroyed. Today only remnants remain of her cabin, as it had been converted into a museum for tourists at the time. During the civil war the Virunga parks were filled with refugees and illegal logging destroyed vast areas.

Today, the Rwandan people have realized the importance of the mountain gorillas and their natural habitat. They have returned to the past by bringing back Kwita Izina - the Baby Gorilla Naming Ceremony in which each baby gorilla gets a name.

Books

Mowat's Virunga, whose British and U.S. editions are called Woman in the Mist '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 dramatizations and fiction of the movie. It includes many of Fossey's own letters and entries in her journals.

A new book published in 2005 by National Geographic in the United States and Palazzo Editions in the United Kingdom as No One Loved Gorillas More, written by Camilla de la Bedoyere, features for the first time Fossey's story told through the letters she wrote to her family and friends. The book was published to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of her death, and includes many of Bob Campbell's previously unpublished photographs.

In 2006, Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was published, written by the investigative journalist Georgianne Nienaber. Although Fossey’s death is officially unsolved, recently released documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as testimony from the International War Crimes Tribunal proceedings, offer new suspects, motives, and opportunities. Every fact about Fossey’s life is meticulously annotated. However, the setting of her conversations with the murdered gorillas is obviously fictional, yet steeped in Rwandan tradition.

More recently, the Kentucky Opera Visions Program, in Louisville, has written an opera about Fossey. The opera, entitled Nyiramachabelli, premiered on May 23, 2006.

A book called the Dark Romance of Dian Fossey was published in 1989 and compares the story of Fossey with versions as seen by others. However, much of the book is uncited and it repeats the salacious and racist stories created by her detractors. Rosamond Carr, former head of the orphanage in Gisenyi who saved the lives of more than a thousand children and who knew Fossey, states in her biography (Land of a Thousand Hills) that the "Dark Romance" book was based on plain lies, just as the article which preceded it and proved to be particularly damaging. For instance, the book claims that Fossey became a racist because, as stated in the book, she was gang-raped by Rwandan soldiers - an event that Fossey and her friends repeatedly and vehemently denied.

She is also prominently featured in a book by the Vanity Fair journalist Alex Shoumatoff called African Madness. Rosamond Carr was equally dismissive of that book's presentation of facts.

Film biography

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 Gorillas in the Mist and the Hayes article were adapted for Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988), starring Sigourney Weaver. The book had covered Fossey's scientific career in great detail and omitted material on her personal life, such as her affair with photographer Bob Campbell. In the film, however, the affair with Campbell (played by Bryan Brown) formed a major subplot.

The Hayes article had portrayed Fossey as a woman completely obsessed with "her" gorillas, who would stop at nothing to protect them. And indeed the film included a fictitious scene in which Fossey orchestrated the mock hanging of a poacher, and another where she burned poachers' huts. It also introduced fictional characters, such as the animal trader Van Vecten, and changed the names of Fossey's students.

After making Gorillas in the Mist, Weaver became a supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and is now its Honorary Chair.

Quotes

• "When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future."

Written works

• Dian Fossey: Gorillas in the Mist, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983
• "An amiable giant: Fuertes's gorilla", Living Bird Quarterly 1(summer): 21–22, 1982
• "Mountain gorilla research, 1974", Nat. Geogr. Soc. Res. Reps. 14: 243–258, 1982
• "The imperiled mountain gorilla", National Geographic 159: 501–523, 1981
• "Mountain gorilla research, 1971–1972", Nat. Geogr. Soc. Res. Reps. 1971 Projects, 12: 237–255, 1980
• "Development of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei) through the first thirty-six months", in The Great Apes 139–186 (D.A. Hamburg & E.R. McCown eds., Benjamin-Cummings), 1979
• "Mountain gorilla research, 1969–1970", Nat. Geogr. Soc. Res. Reps. 1969 Projects, 11: 173–176, 1978
• "His name was Digit", Int. Primate Protection League (IPPL) 5(2): 1–7, 1978
• The behaviour of the mountain gorilla, Ph.D. diss. Cambridge University, 1976
• "Observations on the home range of one group of mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei)", Anim. Behav. 22: 568–581, 1974
• "Vocalizations of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei)", Anim. Behav. 20: 36-531972
• "Living with mountain gorillas", in The Marvels of Animal Behavior 208–229 (T.B. Allen ed., National Geographic Society), 1972
• "More years with mountain gorillas", Nat. Geogr. 140: 574–585, 1971
• "Making friends with mountain gorillas", Nat. Geogr. 137: 48–67, 1970
• D. Fossey & A.H. Harcourt: "Feeding ecology of free-ranging mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei)", in Primate Ecology: Studies of Feeding and Ranging Behaviour in Lemurs, Monkeys and Apes 415–447 (T.H. Clutton-Brock ed., Academic Press), 1977

See also

• Leakey's Angels

External links

• Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
• ippl
• The Legacy of Dian Fossey
• Fossey's first article for National Geographic, 1970
• Dian Fossey eco money with quote
• January 1970 article by Fossey in National Geographic - with pictures
• Murder in the Mist solved? Animal Welfare Institute Quarterly
• This article gives some information about the degradation of Dian's relationship with National Geographic Society prior to her death