Fossey, Dr. Dian (1932 – 1985) American Naturalist and Primatologist

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Dr. Dian Fossey (1932 – 1985)
American naturalist and primatologist

Dian Fossey is remembered by her fellow scientists as the world's foremost authority on mountain gorillas. But to the millions of wildlife conservationists who came to know Fossey through her articles and book, she will always be remembered as a martyr. Throughout the nearly 20 years she spent studying mountain gorillas in central Africa, the American primatologist tenaciously fought the poachers and bounty hunters who threatened to wipe out the endangered primates. She was brutally murdered at her research center in 1985 by what many believe was a vengeful poacher.

Fossey's dream of living in the wilds of Africa dates back to her lonely childhood in San Francisco. She was born in 1932, the only child of George, an insurance agent, and Kitty, a fashion model, (Kidd) Fossey. The Fosseys divorced when Dian was six years old. A year later, Kitty married a wealthy building contractor named Richard Price. Price was a strict disciplinarian who showed little affection for his stepdaughter. Although Fossey loved animals, she was allowed to have only a goldfish. When it died, she cried for a week.

Fossey began her college education at the University of California at Davis in the preveterinary medicine program. She excelled in writing and botany, she failed chemistry and physics. After two years, she transferred to San Jose State University, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in occupational therapy in 1954. While in college, Fossey became a prize-winning equestrian. Her love of horses in 1955 drew her from California to Kentucky, where she directed the occupational therapy department at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville.

Fossey's interest in Africa's gorillas was aroused through primatologist George Schaller's 1963 book, The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior. Through Schaller's book, Fossey became acquainted with the largest and rarest of three subspecies of gorillas, Gorilla gorilla beringei. She learned that these giant apes make their home in the mountainous forests of Rwanda, Zaire, and Uganda. Males grow up to 6 ft (1.8 m) tall and weigh 400 lb (182 kg) or more. Their arms span up to 8 ft (2.4 m). The smaller females weigh about 200 lb (91 kg).

Schaller's book inspired Fossey to travel to Africa to see the mountain gorillas in their homeland. Against her family's advice, she took out a three-year bank loan for $8,000 to finance the seven-week safari. While in Africa, Fossey met the celebrated paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, who had encouraged Jane Goodall in her research of chimpanzees in Tanzania. Leakey was impressed by Fossey's plans to visit the mountain gorillas.

Those plans were nearly destroyed when she shattered her ankle on a fossil dig with Leakey. But just two weeks later, she hobbled on a walking stick up a mountain in the Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) to her first encounter with the great apes. The sight of six gorillas set the course for her future. "I left Kabara (gorilla site) with reluctance but with never a doubt that I would, somehow, return to learn more about the gorillas of the misted mountains," Fossey wrote in her book, Gorillas in the Mist.

Her opportunity came three years later, when Leakey was visiting Louisville on a lecture tour. Fossey urged him to hire her to study the mountain gorillas. He agreed, if she would first undergo a preemptive appendectomy. Six weeks later, he told her the operation was unnecessary; he had only been testing her resolve. But it was too late. Fossey had already had her appendix removed.

The L.S.B. Leakey and the Wilkie Brothers foundations funded her research, along with the National Geographic Society. Fossey began her career in Africa with a brief visit to Jane Goodall in Tanzania to learn the best methods for studying primates and collecting data.

Fossey set up camp early in 1967 at the Kabara meadow in Zaire's Parc National des Virungas, where Schaller had conducted his pioneering research on mountain gorillas a few years earlier. The site was ideal for Fossey's research. Because Zaire's park system protected them against human intrusion, the gorillas showed little fear of Fossey's presence. Unfortunately, civil war in Zaire forced Fossey to abandon the site six months after she arrived.

She established her permanent research site September 24, 1967, on the slopes of the Virunga Mountains in the tiny country of Rwanda. She called it the Karisoke Research Centre, named after the neighboring Karisimbi and Visoke mountains in the Parc National des Volcans. Although Karisoke was just five miles from the first site, Fossey found a marked difference in Rwanda's gorillas. They had been harassed so often by poachers and cattle grazers that they initially rejected all her attempts to make contact.

Theoretically, the great apes were protected from such intrusion within the park. But the government of the impoverished, densely populated country failed to enforce the park rules. Native Batusi herdsmen used the park to trap antelope and buffalo, sometimes inadvertently snaring a gorilla. Most trapped gorillas escaped, but not without seriously mutilated limbs that sometimes led to gangrene and death. Poachers who caught gorillas could earn up to $200,000 for one by selling the skeleton to a university and the hands to tourists. From the start, Fossey's mission was to protect the endangered gorillas from extinction—indirectly, by researching and writing about them, and directly, by destroying traps and chastising poachers.

Fossey focused her studies on some 51 gorillas in four family groups. Each group was dominated by a sexually mature silverback, named for the characteristic gray hair on its back. Younger, bachelor males served as guards for the silverback's harem and their juvenile offspring.

When Fossey began observing the reclusive gorillas, she followed the advice of earlier scientists by concealing herself and watching from a distance. But she soon realized that the only way she would be able to observe their behavior as closely as she wanted was by "habituating" the gorillas to her presence. She did so by mimicking their sounds and behavior. She learned to imitate their belches that signal contentment, their barks of curiosity, and a dozen other sounds. To convince them she was their kind, Fossey pretended to munch on the foliage that made up their diet. Her tactics worked. One day early in 1970, Fossey made history when a gorilla she called Peanuts reached out and touched her hand. Fossey called it her most rewarding moment with the gorillas.

She endeared laymen to Peanuts and the other gorillas she studied through her articles in National Geographic magazine. The apes became almost human through her descriptions of their nurturing and playing. Her early articles dispelled the myth that gorillas are vicious. In her 1971 National Geographic article she described the giant beasts as ranking among "the gentlest animals, and the shiest." In later articles, Fossey acknowledged a dark side to the gorillas. Six of 38 infants born during a 13-year-period were victims of infanticide. She speculated the practice was a silverback's means of perpetuating his own lineage by killing another male's offspring so he could mate with the victim's mother.

Three years into her study, Fossey realized she would need a doctoral degree to continue receiving support for Karisoke. She temporarily left Africa to enroll at Cambridge University, where she earned her Ph.D. in zoology in 1974. In 1977, Fossey suffered a tragedy that would permanently alter her mission at Karisoke. Digit, a young male she had grown to love, was slaughtered by poachers. Walter Cronkite focused national attention on the gorillas' plight when he reported Digit's death on the CBS Evening News. Interest in gorilla conservation surged. Fossey took advantage of that interest by establishing the Digit Fund, a non-profit organization to raise money for anti-poaching patrols and equipment.

Unfortunetly, the money wasn't enough to save the gorillas from poachers. Six months later, a silverback and his mate from one of Fossey's study groups were shot and killed defending their three-year-old son, who had been shot in the shoulder. The juvenile later died from his wounds. It was rumored that the gorilla deaths caused Fossey to suffer a nervous breakdown, although she denied it. What is clear is that the deaths prompted her to step up her fight against the Batusi poachers by terrorizing them and raiding their villages. "She did everything short of murdering those poachers," Mary Smith, senior assistant editor at National Geographic, told contributor Cynthia Washam in an interview. A serious calcium deficiency that causes bones to snap and teeth to rot forced Fossey to leave Africa in 1980. She spent her three-year sojourn as a visiting associate professor at Cornell University. Fossey completed her book, Gorillas in the Mist, during her stint at Cornell. It was published in 1983. Although some scientists criticized the book for its abundance of anecdotes and lack of scientific discussion, lay readers and reviewers received it warmly.

When Fossey returned to Karisoke in 1983, her scientific research was virtually abandoned. Funding had run dry. She was operating Karisoke with her own savings. "In the end, she became more of an animal activist than a scientist," Smith said. "Science kind of went out the window."

On Dec. 27, 1985, Fossey, 54, was found murdered in her bedroom at Karisoke, her skull split diagonally from her forehead to the corner of her mouth. Her murder remains a mystery that has prompted much speculation. Rwandan authorities jointly charged American research assistant Wayne McGuire, who discovered Fossey's body, and Emmanuel Rwelekana, a Rwandan tracker Fossey had fired several months earlier. McGuire maintains his innocence. At the urging of U.S. authorities, he left Rwanda before the charges against him were made public. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced to die before a firing squad if he ever returns to Rwanda.

Farley Mowat, the Canadian author of Fossey's biography, Woman in the Mists, believes McGuire was a scapegoat. He had no motive for killing her, Mowat wrote, and the evidence against him appeared contrived. Rwelekana's story will never be known. He was found dead after apparently hanging himself a few weeks after he was charged with the murder. Smith, and others, believe Fossey's death came at the hands of a vengeful poacher. "I feel she was killed by a poacher," Smith said. "It definitely wasn't any mysterious plot."

Fossey's final resting place is at Karisoke, surrounded by the remains of Digit and more than a dozen other gorillas she had buried. Her legacy lives on in the Virungas, as her followers have taken up her battle to protect the endangered mountain gorillas. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, formerly the Digit Fund, finances scientific research at Karisoke and employs camp staff, trackers and anti-poaching patrols.

The Rwanda government, which for years had ignored Fossey's pleas to protect its mountain gorillas, on September 27, 1990, recognized her scientific achievement with the Ordre (sic) National des Grandes Lacs, the highest award it has ever given a foreigner. Gorillas in Rwanda are still threatened by cattle ranchers and hunters squeezing in on their habitat . According to the Colorado-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, by the early 1990s, fewer than 650 mountain gorillas remained in Rwanda, Zaire, and Uganda. The Virunga Mountains is home to about 320 of them. Smith is among those convinced that the number would be much smaller if not for Fossey's 18 years of dedication to save the great apes. "Her conservation efforts stand above everything else (she accomplished at Karisoke)," Smith said. "She single-handedly saved the mountain gorillas."

[Cynthia Washam ]