Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 – December 26, 1985) was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at the Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name.

Fossey was a leading primatologist and one of The Trimates, a group of female scientists recruited by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments, along with Jane Goodall who studied chimpanzees, and Birutė Galdikas, who studied orangutans.

Fossey spent 20 years in Rwanda, where she supported conservation efforts, strongly opposed poaching and tourism in wildlife habitats, and made more people acknowledge the sapience of gorillas. Following the killing of a gorilla and subsequent tensions, she was murdered in her cabin at a remote camp in Rwanda. Although Fossey's American research assistant was convicted in absentia, there is no consensus as to who killed her.

Her research and conservation work helped reduce the downward population trend in mountain gorillas.

Early life

Fossey was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Hazel (née Kidd), a fashion model, and George Edward Fossey III, a real estate agent and business owner. Her parents divorced when she was six. Her mother 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. Fossey's stepfather, Richard Price, never treated her as his own child. He would not allow Fossey to sit at the dining room table with him or her mother during dinner. A man adhering to strict discipline, Richard Price offered Fossey little to no emotional support. In 1950, Richard and Hazel relocated with Dian to Marin County, the same county where her father George Fossey, now married to Mrs. Gladys Bove (née Kohler), resided. George and Gladys later divorced. George Fossey's third and final marriage was to Kathryn Smith around 1959. Kathryn has mistakenly been cited as Dian's mother over the years.

Struggling with personal insecurity, Fossey turned to animals as a way to gain acceptance. Her love for animals began with her first pet goldfish and continued throughout her life.

Education and medical career

Fossey attended Lowell High School. Following her stepfather's guidance, she enrolled in a business course at the College of Marin in Kentfield. However, spending her summer on a ranch in Montana 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 of her stepfather's wish that she attend a business school, Fossey decided to devote her professional life to working with animals. Consequently, Fossey's parents failed to give her any substantial financial support in her adult life. where she became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and studied occupational therapy, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1954. Fossey began her career in occupational therapy. She interned at hospitals in California and worked with tuberculosis patients. Fossey had become 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 in Louisville.

Her shy, reserved personality helped her work well with the children at the hospital. Fossey became close to 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 daily and experienced the inclusive family atmosphere that had been missing for most of her life. During her free time, she pursued her love of horses.

The Leakeys and the Congo

Journey to Africa

Fossey turned down an offer to join the Henrys on an African tour due to lack of finances, and went on a seven-week visit to Africa.

After studying Swahili and auditing a class on primatology during the eight months it took to get funding and her visas, 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 the Gombe Stream Research Centre to meet Goodall and observe her research methods with chimpanzees. 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.

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. Established up Mount Bisoke, the defined study area covered . 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. Fossey attempted to habituate the gorillas by copying their actions. Over time, the gorillas became accustomed to Fossey. As she explained to the BBC in 1984: "I'm an inhibited persona and I felt that the gorillas were somewhat inhibited as well, so I imitated their natural, normal behaviour like feeding, munching on celery stalks or scratching myself."

Fossey's research was funded by the Wilkie Foundation and the Leakey Home, with primary funding from the National Geographic Society.

In 1969, 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, Fossey restored them to a semblance of health. Over her objections, the gorillas were shipped to Cologne, where they lived nine years in captivity, both dying in the same month.

In January 1970, she appeared on the cover of National Geographic, which brought tremendous attention to her work. Most of the photographs, published in the 1970 and 1971 edition of the magazine, were taken by the English wildlife photographer and filmmaker Bob Campbell between 1968 and 1972.

Fossey was often hostile to Africans who entered into the protected area, even shooting roaming cattle.

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. The official Rwandan national park guards, consisting of 24 staffers, did not eradicate any poachers' traps during the same period. Kweli's mother, Macho, was also killed in the raid, but, as a result of Uncle Bert's intervention, Kweli was not captured; however, three-year-old Kweli died, slowly and painfully, of gangrene, from being brushed by a poacher's bullet. Digit was decapitated, and his hands cut off for ashtrays. He was twelve years old. Fossey later described Digit's killing as the "saddest event in all my years of sharing the daily lives of mountain gorilla." In a letter to a friend, she wrote, "We stripped him and spread eagled him and lashed the holy blue sweat out of him with nettle stalks and leaves..." After her murder, Fossey's National Geographic editor, Mary Smith, told Shlachter that on visits to the United States, Fossey would "load up on firecrackers, cheap toys and magic tricks as part of her method to mystify the (Africans) in order to hold them at bay." She wore face-masks and pretended to practice black magic to scare away poachers. Her body was lying face up near the two beds where she slept, about from the 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; he later said I reached down to check her vital signs, I saw her face had been split, diagonally, with one machete blow."

The last entry in her diary read: in a site that she 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 California, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Aftermath

After Fossey's murder, her entire staff was arrested. This included Emmanuel Rwelekana, a Rwandan tracker, who had been fired from his job after he allegedly tried to kill Fossey with a machete, according to the government's account of McGuire's trial. All were later released, except Rwelekana, who was later found dead in prison, supposedly having hanged himself. because no extradition treaty existed between the U.S. and Rwanda at that time, McGuire did not return to Rwanda. Thereafter, McGuire was largely absent from public notice, 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 rescinded upon discovery of his relation to the Fossey case.

Other theories about her murder persist: that the perpetrators were poachers taking revenge; that Zairian hit-men were hired to kill her for her presumably valuable research notes; that there were political motives; that she was killed by a panicked burglar, who was hired to steal a protective talisman that Fossey had taken from a poacher;

In 2001, Protais Zigiranyirazo, who was suspected of ordering Fossey's murder, was arrested in Belgium for his alleged role in the planning of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He was convicted in 2008 and acquitted on appeal in 2009.

Personal life and views

thumb|Fossey attended [[Darwin College, Cambridge|Darwin College at Cambridge.]]

During her African safari, Fossey met Alexie Forrester, the brother of a Rhodesian 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.

Health

Fossey had been troubled by lung problems from an early age and, later in her life, developed advanced emphysema brought on by years of heavy cigarette smoking. As the debilitating disease progressed—further aggravated by the high mountain elevation and damp climate—Fossey found it increasingly difficult to conduct field research, frequently experiencing shortness of breath and requiring the help of an oxygen tank when climbing or hiking long distances.

Opposition to tourism

Fossey strongly opposed wildlife tourism, as gorillas are susceptible to human anthroponotic diseases like influenza from which they have limited 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 behavior.

Legacy

After Fossey's death, the Digit Fund was renamed the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. The Karisoke Research Center is now operated by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund from its Ellen DeGeneres Campus in Rwanda, and continues the daily gorilla monitoring and protection that Fossey started.

Fossey is generally credited with reversing the downward trend in the mountain gorilla population. Due to poaching, gorilla populations declined from 450 in 1960 to just 250 in 1981. However, Fossey's "war on poaching" saw the final confirmed killing of a gorilla in 1983. By the late 1980s, the population had risen to 280. It continues to rise, as of 1987. Fossey's research, and the following publicity, spawned "gorilla tourism".

Fossey's work with the gorillas was noted by David Attenborough in his 1978 filming for the TV series Life on Earth. It was featured in the Netflix documentary A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough (2026), which features the Pablo group of gorillas first seen by Fossey.

Universal Pictures bought the film rights to Gorillas in the Mist from Fossey in 1985. Warner Bros. bought the rights to "The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey", a November 1986 Life magazine profile by Harold T. P. Hayes that was later expanded into a book. As a result of a legal battle between the two studios, a co-production was arranged. Portions of both works were adapted for the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver. Fossey's book covers her scientific career in detail, omitting material on her personal life that was related in detail by Hayes after her death. In the film, Fossey's affair with photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown) is a major subplot. Hayes presents 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. Weaver won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the film.

In Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood, Fossey is regarded as a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious sect.

In 2014, the 82nd anniversary of Fossey's birth was commemorated by a Google Doodle.

In December 2017, a three-hour TV series titled Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist aired on the National Geographic Channel. The series tells the story of Fossey's life, work, murder and legacy, using archive footage and still images, interviews with people who knew and worked with her, specially shot footage, and reconstruction.

In A Forest in the Clouds: My Year Among the Mountain Gorillas in the Remote Enclave of Dian Fossey (Pegasus Books, 2018) John Fowler describes Fossey's remote mountain gorilla camp, Karisoke Research Center, a few years prior to her murder, telling the story of the unraveling of Fossey's Rwandan facility as pressures mount in an effort to extricate Fossey from her domain. Fowler represents Fossey as a chain-smoking, hard-drinking woman who bullied her staff and students in her efforts to hold on to her reputation as scientist and savior of the mountain gorillas.

See also

  • List of animal rights advocates
  • List of unsolved murders (1980–1999)
  • The Trimates

Selected bibliography

Books

Scholarly articles

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited

  • Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
  • International Primate Protection League
  • Fossey's first article for National Geographic, 1970
  • 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
  • Dian Fossey papers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections
  • Nina Strochlic: The Renegade Scientist Who Taught Us to Love Gorillas, National Geographic Magazine, online, August 31, 2017