28/12/2025
Like many who care about the famous 'gorillas in the mist', I've been thinking a lot about Dian Fossey and how to mark her untimely demise 40 years ago.
I looked up this article I wrote for BBC Wildlife Magazine just after her murder, still unsolved in most people's eyes, and have been musing upon the transformation that four decades of successful conservation have brought. That haven of protected forest around the original site of Karisoke has now extended to the whole of the mountain gorilla habitat in the three parks that make up the Virungas Volcanoes of Rwanda, DRC (Zaire when this was written) and Uganda, plus Bwindi in Uganda and extending over the border to Serambwe in DRC. The three countries' wildlife departments collaborate under a treaty (the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration) and NGO support comes from the two descendants of Dian's Digit Fund, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and The Gorilla Organization, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme and Gorilla Doctors, also initiated by Dian asking for veterinary help.
If you read the article, please try to do so in the context of our thinking at the time - much has changed for the better but one thing that never changes is the dedication of all the rangers, guides and NGO partners, with their supporters all over the world - most inspired by Dian!
Ecoflix
Born Free Foundation
Convention on Migratory Species
Working for the Wild
International Primate Protection League
the Jane Goodall Institute
