Dian Fossey: Animal Rights Activist and Protector of Mountain Gorillas
was looking for another researcher This time he was seeking someone to undertake a long term study of mountain gorillas He asked Dian if she would like to be that person She was stunned by the offer she had no formal training and she was 34 years old Surely she was too old and inexperienced for such a project Louis told Dian that her maturity was an advantage and that her passion was more important than scientific training I have no use Famous Fossil Family Louis Leakey was born in Kenya in 1903 His parents were British missionaries who worked with Kenya’s largest tribal group the Kikuyu Louis spoke Kikuyu before he spoke English When he was 13 he was initiated into the tribe and given the name Wakaruigi or Son of the sparrow hawk As a child Louis often wandered through the wilderness He occasionally found arrowheads and stone tools which sparked his interest in the history of humanity When he was a 21-year-old anthropology student Louis went on his first archaeological dig in Africa At the time experts believed humanity had originated in Asia Louis believed it had begun in Africa In 1931 he began his work at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania an area rich in fossils In 1936 he married Mary Nichols also an anthropologist Together they made a number of important finds including skulls teeth bones and tools These discoveries proved human ancestors had lived in Africa millions of years ago Louis also believed that long-term studies of great apes which are genetically similar to humans would teach scientists much about human evolution which is the gradual development of humans over a long period of time He commissioned Jane Goodall Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas to undertake such studies Louis and Mary’s son Richard and his wife Meave continue Louis’s work today as does granddaughter Louise Louis Leakey died in 1972 88
for over-trained people he said I prefer people who are not specifically educated for this field since they go into the work with open minds and without prejudice and preconceptions Dian jumped at the chance to spend time in the wilderness with mountain gorillas it was a dream come true Eight months later Dian Fossey arrived in Africa to start her study of the great apes a passion that would consume 18 years of her life Louis called her the gorilla girl Anthropologists Mary and Louis Leakey with a tiny fossil specimen in 1962 Inset a replica based on a fossilized skull discovered by Mary and unearthed by her and Louis in 1959 The skull was of an early ancestor of humans and dated back more than 1 7 million years 9
tHe trimates Because of the close genetic relationships between humans chimpanzees gorillas and orangutans Louis Leakey believed that much could be learned about human evolution by studying the behavior of great apes in their natural habitats To that end in 1958 he commissioned Jane Goodall to study chimpanzees in Tanganyika now Tanzania In 1966 he hired Dian Fossey to observe mountain gorillas in the nations of Congo and Rwanda And in 1971 he sponsored Birute Galdikas in a study of orangutans in Borneo These three female researchers became known as Leakey’s Ladies Leakey’s Angels or in a pun on primate which is a grouping of mammals that includes humans and apes the Trimates Gorilla Expert During her years in Africa Dian did more than observe gorillas She also recognized that human activities threatened their survival as a species She shared these facts of gorilla life with the world Over the years Dian wrote four books and seven scientific papers about mountain gorilla behavior She discovered they were curious affectionate creatures that loved to socialize and play A mountain gorilla family in Africa As Dian spent more time with mountain gorillas she found them to be in her words dignified highly social gentle giants with individual personalities and strong family relationships 10
She learned much about what gorillas eat how they spend their days how they interact with each other and what they say to each other For more than a year she recorded gorillas vocalizations and discovered they make 16 or 17 clear and distinct sounds each with its own meaning Dian and the students who worked with her also kept counts of the gorilla population in the Rwandan jungle Through the 1970s and 1980s these counts showed that gorilla numbers were drastically declining That’s because their habitat was being turned into farmland and local people were killing them often by accident and sometimes on purpose Dian predicted that if nothing changed mountain gorillas would be extinct before the end of the 20th century By this time Dian was acknowledged as the world’s leading mountain gorilla expert so when she shared her prediction about the gorillas bleak future people listened This led to one of the first coordinated conservation efforts in the world Conservation is the act of preserving protecting and restoring the natural environment including its habitats and wildlife To help save the gentle beasts some of Dian’s colleagues launched education and tourism programs in the Rwandan jungle An aerial photograph of the border of Virunga National Park with fields on one side and woods on the other This photo shows a striking contrast between the impact of cultivated farmland and the conservation of woodland that is home to mountain gorillas and other wildlife 11
