Dian Fossey, the Mountain Gorillas and Me

Conservation of the Mountain Gorilla: a Snapshot from 1978

In 1978, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda working on fish culture development. On July 4 of that year, I attended the U.S. ambassador’s Independence Day party. A friend of mine, Bill Weber, came over to me and told me that he had just received a grant from the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation to conduct a census of the mountain gorilla which had not been done in quite a few years. He said the problem was that he needed two teams to do the census and he didn’t have another biologist to lead the second team. I told him to not move. I raced over to the Peace Corps Director and explained that my fish culture project was on hold and Bill needed another biologist to conduct the census. He said “go for it.” I went back to Bill and told him he had his biologist.

When I finally hiked up to the Karisoke Research Center, I was pumped and ready to get started on the census. However, I wasn’t quite feeling right. Soon afterwards, I started getting a fever and a pain in my lower right side. When Dian heard about this, she decided to check me out. I might be the only person in the world who ever had Dian Fossey feel their groin and lower abdomen. Obviously, there was concern about a potential appendicitis. Dian said that if I wasn’t better in the morning, she would arrange to have me taken down from the volcano and brought to a local hospital. I was afraid my dream was over. Luckily, the next morning I was totally fine.

Of course, I had to go through a significant training program to learn mountain gorilla culture and behavior. I visited the two habituated groups, Groups 4 and 5, and practiced my belch vocalizations. Normally, I did this with researcher Amy Vedder, Bill’s other half. My final exam was having to approach an unhabituated group and face an irate silverback by myself. That went well and I was ready to work on the census. The core technique of the census was to find fresh gorilla trails and track back to a recent nest. There you could confirm what group you were following and count the number of gorillas because each gorilla makes their own nest. However, babies and very young gorillas sleep with their mothers, so you also needed to carefully examine the nests for baby gorilla scat.

The census team moved out from the Karisoke Research Center and set up a base camp between Visoke and Sabyinyo volcanoes. The two teams started tracking gorillas, relying heavily on the excellent tracking skills of several of the Rwandan staff. Everything seemed to be going well.

Soon after the beginning of the census, a Rwandan staff member from the Karisoke Research Center came into camp with an urgent message. Poachers had attacked Group 4 and some gorillas had been killed. Dian was ordering everyone to return to Karisoke immediately. Everyone would get assignments. When we got there, we learned what our role was to be. Because I was new to camp, but had gone through extensive gorilla training, Dian wanted me to become part of Group 5 in order to protect them. She gave me her revolver and indicated that I should join the group each morning as they were starting to leave the nests where they spent the night. Late afternoon, as they were starting to construct their new nests for the night, I would return to Karisoke. Dian also wanted me to go on anti-poaching patrols with one of the Rwandan trackers; mostly this was about finding and destroying snares that caught and/or wounded many animals, including sometimes gorillas. Eventually, the danger from poachers seemed substantially reduced but the census was put on hold for quite a while. Bill later completed the census but I was no longer available.

The most rewarding part of this whole adventure was when I was assigned to be part of Group 5. I knew how to behave around the gorillas and the adults pretty much ignored me. One exception to this was one day when I was in a small clearing with the group and a young blackback male began wrestling with Beethoven. The silverback would tolerate this for a short time and then he would toss the younger male away from him. One time the young male’s head landed near my thigh. He looked over at me, grabbed me, and started pulling me over to Beethoven. Apparently, he wanted me to help him wrestle Beethoven. I didn’t want anything to do with that, so I strongly resisted. He finally gave up on me and went over to Beethoven on his own. Although most of the gorillas mostly ignored me, the younger members of the group were very curious about me. In particular, a 4-year old named Pablo, frequently hung out with me, sometimes sitting in my lap and staring into my eyes (see Figure 7). He also liked to jump on me from behind, sometimes knocking my notebook and camera out of my hands.

Roughly 20 years later, I was at home in the U.S. and decided to do some channel surfing. I found a documentary on mountain gorillas, so of course I had to watch it. The first half of the show focused on a group of gorillas that lived around the summit of Karisimbi which of course is quite cold. They had to adapt to that climate and vegetation in a number of ways. Then, about halfway through the program, the narrator said now we are going to visit another group that lives at a much lower altitude near the park boundary. He said this is the largest group of mountain gorillas on record and it is led by a massive silverback named…Pablo! When I heard this and saw the group, tears started streaming down my face. It took a long time for me to calm down emotionally. I couldn’t believe that my buddy, little Pablo, was now a 450-pound silverback and the leader of his own group.

To learn more about the mountain gorillas in 1978 and to understand the bigger story, both before and afterwards, get a copy of Bill and Amy’s book, In the Kingdom of Gorillas. It is gripping and extremely well written. Click on the link above or the book cover below.

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So now, 44 years later, my husband, Todd Huston, and I, along with several of our friends, are going to Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas. While in Africa, on June 17, Todd and I will be celebrating 29 years together. It will be my first time in Rwanda since 1978. None of the gorillas that I had contact with in 1978 are still alive but I am so excited to go back and meet the gorillas that are living there now. This trip was originally supposed to take place in 2020, then 2021. However, the pandemic squashed those two opportunities. Now it looks like the third time will be the charm.