Dian Fossey
The second half of the twentieth century saw growing scientific attention to the behavior and conservation of great apes, as researchers began conducting sustained fieldwork in remote habitats to document primate life in ways that laboratory study could not provide. Dian Fossey, born on January 16, 1932, in San Francisco, became one of the practitioners working within that field as a primatologist, ethologist, zoologist, ecologist, anthropologist, and academic writer who conducted her research in English.
Educated at Lowell High School, the College of Marin, the University of California Davis, and San Jose State University, Fossey later received further education at Darwin College and the University of Cambridge. She was initially encouraged by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey to undertake fieldwork with mountain gorillas, and from 1966 until her death she conducted an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups at the Karisoke Research Center. That sustained engagement with gorilla populations in the field, lasting nearly two decades, formed the core of her scientific career as a United States citizen working in a remote research setting. She died at the Karisoke Research Center in late December 1985.
Fossey documented her work at Karisoke and her prior career in the book Gorillas in the Mist, which was published two years before her death. The volume received sufficient cultural attention that it was adapted into a film of the same name in 1988, three years after she was murdered, giving her written account a reach beyond the academic audiences her fieldwork had originally addressed.
Quotes by Dian Fossey
Those bearing the heavy responsibility of caring for captive gorillas should be encouraged to exchange so-called nonbreeders between populations, an inherent process among free-living gorillas and one that avoids inbreeding and also stimulates productivity.
Any observer is an intruder in the domain of a wild animal and must remember that the rights of that animal supersede human interests. An observer must also keep in mind that an animal's memories of one day's contact might well be reflected in the following day's behavior.
If mountain gorillas are to survive and propagate, far more active conservation measures urgently need to be undertaken. The question remains, is it already too late?
Among all researchers who have worked in the African field, I consider myself one of the most fortunate because of the privilege of having been able to study the mountain gorilla.
I cannot concur with those who advocate saving gorillas from extinction by killing and capturing more free-living individuals only to exhibit them in confinement.
The Parc des Volcans in Rwanda, where I conduct most of my studies, is heavily infested with poachers and herdsmen, whose cattle graze right through my camp area. Park boundaries have no meaning to these tribesmen.
The mountain gorilla faces grave danger of extinction - primarily because of the encroachments of native man upon its habitat - and neglect by civilized man, who does not conscientiously protect even the limited areas now allotted for the gorilla's survival.
Play seems to be one of the first activities inhibited by the presence of an observer until a group becomes well habituated. For this reason, I consider it more common than previously thought.
Not only was it necessary to get the gorillas accustomed to the bluejeaned creature who had become a part of their daily lives, it was also very necessary for me to know and recognize the particular animals of each group as the amazing individuals they were.