Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 – December 26, 1985) was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at the Karisoke Research Center and her prior career. It is one of the sources for a 1988 film of the same name.Ware, Susan; Braukman, Stacy (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 5. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. pp. 220–1. .
Fossey was a leading primatologist and one of The Trimates, a group of female scientists recruited by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments. Her counterparts Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas studied chimpanzees and orangutans, respectively.
Fossey spent 20 years in Rwanda, where she promoted "active conservation", opposed poaching and tourism in wildlife habitats, and made more people acknowledge the sapience of gorillas. After the 1977 killing of her favorite gorilla, Digit, and the deaths of some of the animals she studied most, Fossey devoted less of her time to scientific research and more to protecting the gorillas. Her direct tactics escalated tensions, and she was murdered in her cabin at Karisoke on December 26, 1985. Although Fossey's American research assistant was convicted in absentia, there is no consensus as to who killed her. Fossey was buried beside Digit in the gorilla graveyard she constructed at Karisoke.
Although Fossey had anticipated that the mountain gorilla would not survive to the year 2000, her research and conservation work helped reduce the downward population trend of the species.
Early life Fossey was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Hazel (née Kidd), a fashion model, and George Edward Fossey III, a real estate agent and business owner. Her parents divorced when she was six. Her mother remarried the following year, to businessman Richard Price. Her father tried to keep in contact, but her mother discouraged it, and all contact was subsequently lost. Fossey's stepfather, Richard Price, never treated her as his own child. He would not allow Fossey to sit at the dining room table with him or her mother during dinner. A man adhering to strict discipline, Richard Price offered Fossey little to no emotional support.Washam, Cynthia. "Fossey, Dian." Environmental Encyclopedia. 4th ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 701–703. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. February 28, 2013. In 1950, Richard and Hazel relocated with Dian to Marin County, the same county where her father George Fossey, now married to Mrs. Gladys Bove (née Kohler), resided. George and Gladys later divorced. George Fossey's third and final marriage was to Kathryn Smith around 1959. Kathryn has mistakenly been cited as Dian's mother over the years. Struggling with personal insecurity, Fossey turned to animals as a way to gain acceptance."Fossey, Dian." The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, Karen Markoe, and Arnold Markoe. Vol. 1: 1981–1985. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 294–296. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. February 28, 2013. Her love for animals began with her first pet goldfish and continued throughout her life. At age six, she began riding horses, earning a letter from her school; by her college graduation in 1954, Fossey had established herself as an equestrienne.
Education and medical career Fossey attended Lowell High School. Following her stepfather's guidance, she enrolled in a business course at the College of Marin in Kentfield. However, spending her summer on a ranch in Montana at age 19 rekindled her love of animals, and she enrolled in a pre-veterinary course in biology at the University of California, Davis. In defiance of her stepfather's wish that she attend a business school, Fossey decided to devote her professional life to working with animals. Consequently, Fossey's parents failed to give her any substantial financial support in her adult life. She supported herself by working as a clerk at a White Front department store, doing other clerking and laboratory work, and laboring as a machinist in a factory.
Although Fossey had always been an exemplary student, she had difficulty with chemistry and physics and failed her second year of the program. She transferred to San Jose State College where she became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and studied occupational therapy, receiving her bachelor's degree in 1954. Fossey began her career in occupational therapy. She interned at hospitals in California and worked with tuberculosis patients. Fossey had become a prizewinning equestrian, which drew her to Kentucky in 1955, and a year later took a job as an occupational therapist at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville.
Her shy, reserved personality helped her work well with the children at the hospital. Fossey became close to her coworker, Mary White "Gaynee" Henry, secretary to the hospital's chief administrator and the wife of one of the doctors, Michael J. Henry. The Henrys invited Fossey to join them on their family farm, where she worked with livestock daily and experienced the inclusive family atmosphere that had been missing for most of her life. During her free time, she pursued her love of horses.
The Leakeys and the Congo Journey to Africa
Fossey turned down an offer to join the Henrys on an African tour due to lack of finances, but in 1963, she borrowed $8,000 (one year's salary), took out her life savings and went on a seven-week visit to Africa. In September 1963, she arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. She employed safari guide John Alexander for her travels through Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Their route included visits to Tsavo, East Africa's largest national park; the saline lake of Manyara, famous for attracting giant flocks of flamingos; and the Ngorongoro Crater, well known for its abundant wildlife. The final two sites for her visit were Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (the archeological site of Louis and Mary Leakey); and Mt. Mikeno in Congo, where, in 1959, American zoologist George Schaller had carried out a yearlong pioneering study of the mountain gorilla. At Olduvai Gorge, Fossey met the Leakeys while they were examining the area for hominid fossils. Leakey talked to Fossey about the work of English primatologist Jane Goodall and the importance of long-term research on the great apes.
Although Fossey had broken her ankle while visiting the Leakeys, by October 16, she was staying in Walter Baumgartel's small hotel in Uganda, the Travellers Rest. Baumgartel, an advocate of gorilla conservation, was among the first to see the benefits that tourism could bring to the area, and he introduced Fossey to Kenyan wildlife photographers Joan and Alan Root. The couple agreed to allow Fossey and Alexander to camp behind their own camp, and it was during these few days that Fossey first encountered wild mountain gorillas. After staying with friends in Rhodesia, Fossey returned home to Louisville to repay her loans. The weekend color supplement of The Courier-Journal published three articles and photographs by Fossey, detailing her visit to Africa.
Research in the Congo
When Leakey made an appearance in Louisville while on a nationwide lecture tour, Fossey took the color supplements that had appeared about her African trip in The Courier-Journal to show to Leakey, who remembered her and her interest in mountain gorillas. Three years after the original safari, Leakey suggested that Fossey could undertake a long-term study of the gorillas in the same manner as Jane Goodall had with chimpanzees in Tanzania. Leakey lined up funding for Fossey to research mountain gorillas, and Fossey left her job to relocate to Africa.
After studying Swahili and auditing a class on primatology during the eight months it took to get funding and her visas, Fossey arrived in Nairobi in December 1966. With the help of Joan Root and Leakey, Fossey acquired the necessary provisions and an old canvas-topped Land Rover which she named "Lily". On the way to the Congo, Fossey visited the Gombe Stream Research Centre to meet Goodall and observe her research methods with chimpanzees. Accompanied by photographer Alan Root, who helped her obtain work permits for the Virunga Mountains, Fossey began her field study at Kabara, in the Congo in early 1967, in the same meadow where Schaller had made his camp seven years earlier. Root taught her basic gorilla tracking, and his tracker Sanwekwe later helped in Fossey's camp. Living in tents on mainly tinned produce, once a month Fossey would hike down the mountain to "Lily" and make the two-hour drive to the village of Kikumba to restock.
Fossey identified three distinct groups in her study area, but could not get close to them. She eventually found that mimicking their actions and making grunting sounds reassured them, together with submissive behavior and eating of the local celery plant. She later attributed her success with habituating gorillas to her experience working as an occupational therapist with children with autism. Like George Schaller, Fossey relied greatly on individual "noseprints" for identification, initially via sketching and later by camera.
Fossey had arrived in the Congo in locally turbulent times. Known as the Belgian Congo until its independence in June 1960, unrest and rebellion plagued the new government until 1965, when Lieutenant General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, by then commander-in-chief of the national army, seized control of the country and declared himself president for five years during what is now called the Congo Crisis. During the political upheaval, a rebellion and battles took place in the Kivu Province. On July 9, 1967, soldiers arrived at the camp to escort Fossey and her research workers down, and she was detained at Rumangabo for two weeks. Fossey eventually escaped through bribery to Walter Baumgärtel's Travellers Rest Hotel in Kisoro, where her escort was arrested by the Ugandan military. Advised by the Ugandan authorities not to return to Congo, after meeting Leakey in Nairobi, Fossey agreed with him against US Embassy advice to restart her study on the Rwandan side of the Virungas. In Rwanda, Fossey had met local American expatriate Rosamond Carr, who introduced her to Belgian local Alyette DeMunck. DeMunck had a local's knowledge of Rwanda and offered to find Fossey a suitable site for study.
Conservation work in Rwanda
On September 24, 1967, Fossey founded the Karisoke Research Center, a remote rainforest camp nestled in Ruhengeri province in the saddle of two volcanoes. For the research center's name, Fossey used "Kari" for the first four letters of Mount Karisimbi that overlooked her camp from the south, and "soke" for the last four letters of Mount Bisoke, the slopes of which rose to the north, directly behind the camp. Established up Mount Bisoke, the defined study area covered .
Catching sight of Fossey, villagers would cry out, Nyirmachabelli, which meant "the old lady who lives in the forest without a man". "Although my new name was pleasantly lyrical," Fossey wrote, "I would have to admit that I did not like its implications." She herself translated it as "The Lone Woman of the Forest".