One thing I really want to do some day is see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. It was Dian Fossey’s book Gorillas in the Mist that introduced me to these fascinating primates, and the horrible wars with poachers.
What made me think about them was a newsletter from Daily Science with the headline: Gorillas Scared by Poaching Learn to Trust Again. It wasn’t about mountain gorillas, but lowland gorillas in Cameroon, home of the Cross River gorillas – the world’s rarest great ape with only about 280 individuals remaining in the wild. They are threatened not only by poaching but also by destruction of their habitat from logging of the rain forest and the stripping of land for agriculture. Humans and our paths of destruction. A young woman, Anougue France, has been trying to reverse the trend of the disappearing gorillas. Anougue and her team have been studying the gorillas in Cameroon’s Dipikar Island, where they have been heavily poached. The gorillas took seven years to accept the researchers. For the first few years they displayed aggression or ran away in fear. Who could blame them? After seven years they eventually tolerated the researchers, sometimes showing curiosity, but mainly showing indifference. Anti-poaching patrols were increased during the research and between 2015 and 2022 poaching fell by half. Anougue said the study showed that gorillas could overcome past trauma and allow people to approach. This meant that local people could earn a living from tourists paying to see them – which in turn would help stop poaching. Back to Dian Fossey. I met her once at her book launch in Maritzburg. I remember being struck by how tall she was. She walked onto the stage and the first thing she did was kick off her shoes. Then she did some hu-hu-hu-hu noises that she did whenever she approached the gorillas. To gain acceptance, she had mimicked what they did, munching on sticks of celery and walking on her knuckles. She was a very entertaining speaker. Dian was also controversial, mainly for her “direct action” against poachers. According to the BBC she wrote a letter to a friend about catching a poacher: “We stripped him and spread eagled him and lashed the holy blue sweat out of him with nettle stalks and leaves.” Forty years ago she was hacked to death with a panga. Her murderer was never caught. Whatever she may have done wrong, Dian Fossey brought the plight of the mountain gorillas to the attention of the world and changed how we thought of them. As the BBC wrote: “Gorillas had an appalling reputation as violent brutes that would kill a human on sight. Fossey demolished the myth. She showed that these apes are actually gentle giants, with individual personalities and rich social lives. In many ways they are like us.” Dian’s legacy is the Mountain Gorilla Project that works to secure the future of these endangered animals. In the 1980s there were only 254 mountain gorillas. Today there are over 1,100. “When you realise the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate on the preservation of the future.” – Dian Fossey.
