Dian Fossey was an American zoologist who spent the better part of her life at a remote camp high up on the slopes of the virungas studying the mountain gorillas. Without her tenacious efforts to have poaching stamped out, and the work of committed local since her violent murder, there possibly wouldn’t be any of the great apes remaining in Rwanda.
Although trained in occupational therapy, in 1963 Fossey took out a loan and traveled to Tanzania where she met Dr Louis and Mary Leakey. At the time, she learned about the pioneering work of Jane Goodall with chimpanzee and Gearge schaller’s ground breaking studies on gorillas
By 1966 Fossey had secured the funding and support of the Leakey family, and began conducting field research of her own. However, political unrest caused her to abandon her efforts the following year at kabara (in the democratic republic of Congo), and establish the Karisoke Research centre, a remote camp on Bisoke in the more politically stable Rwanda Virungas.
Fossey was catapulted to international stardom when her photograph was snapped by Bob Campbell in 1970 and splashed across the cover of National Geographic. Seizing her new found celebrity status, Fossey embarked on a massive publicity campaign aimed at saving the mountain gorillas from impending extinction.
Tragically, Fossey was brutally murdered on 26 December 1985. Her skull was split open by a panga, a type of machete used by local poachers to cut the heads and hands of gorillas. This bloody crime scene caused the media to speculate that poarchers, who were angered by her conservationist stance, murdered her in a fit of range.
While this may have been the case, agood measure of mystery still surrounds Fossey’s murder and despite the1986 conviction of the former student, many people believe that the murderer’s true identity was never credibly established and her former student was merely a convenient scapegoat.
Following the death, Fossey was buried in the virungas next to her favorite gorilla digit, who had previously been killed by poachers. Throughout his life, Dian fossey was a proponent of Active conservation: the belief that endangered species are best protected through rigorous anti-poaching measures and habitat protection. As a result, she strongly opposed the promotion of tourism in the Virunga range, though the Dian Fossey Gorilla fund international has changed its position on the issue since untimely death.
Today, Fossey is best known for her “gorillas in the mist”, which is both a description of her scientific research and an insightful memoir detailing her time in Rwanda.
Parts of her life story were later adapted in the film Gorillas in the mist: the movie was criticized for several fictitious scenes in which Fossey aggressively harasses local poachers, as well as its stylised portrayal of her affair with photographer Bob Campbell. It does, however, serve as a good introduction to the on going plight of the endangered mountain gorilla.
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 saying Fossey had been his friend and mentor, calling her death “tragic” and the charges against him 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.However; some scholars have suggested alternate theories regarding her murder including intimations that she may have been killed by financial interests linked to tourism or illicit trade.
Leave a Reply