Dian Fossey was brutally murdered in 1985, her skull split open by her attacker(s) with a machete, the type commonly used by poachers. She was found in the bedroom of her cabin in the Virunga mountains, Rwanda, and she had apparently tried to load her pistol during the attack. To this day, her killer or her killers have not been found.
While Fossey worked primarily as a zoologist in the mountainous forests of Rwanda, she was also involved in strenuous and time-consuming anti-poaching activities. While it was illegal to poach gorillas in the Virunga mountains, this law was hardly enacted by local authorities, who would virtually turn a blind eye. Fossey took it upon herself to watch for poachers and confiscate their traps. Speculation abounds as to whether she was killed by poachers or whether the Rwandan authorities grew tired of her presence and determination to protect gorillas from human intervention, whether for tourism purposes or poaching them to European zoos. .
Fossey described his conservation type as ‘active’. The meaning is quite clear. She was a practical practitioner who believed 100 percent in enforcing the law and making those who break it pay the penalty. She disparagingly characterized ‘theoretical’ conservation as the kind that ticked all the boxes, but didn’t do the hard work of application. Theoretical conservation were all statements of motherhood, while active conservation meant risk-taking and taking chances to achieve positive results, even when this disturbed the status quo or threatened the interests of a powerful few.
Eighteen years following and making contact with gorillas
Gorillas in the Mist is Dian Fossey’s memoir covering her 18 years of closely following and making contact with groups of gorillas in the mountainous forests of Rwanda. Fossey began his work in the late 1960s and was still active in field work until his death in 1985. This was hard, unglamorous work that demanded a certain level of fitness and strength (one is amazed at the Fossey’s nicotine addiction and how he managed to track gorillas through such difficult terrain with his emphysema worsening). The weather was often wet, and Fossey in one section of the book describes a typical day in which he wakes up and has to put on wet clothes and then fight his way through the dense mountain vegetation to follow the gorillas.
Fossey’s style is often light and cheerful, and he likes to crack jokes. Describing the gorilla’s habit of eating its own dung (perhaps, it is speculated, for vitamin B12 that is fermented in the stomach), she called the food “instantly heated TV dinners.” The breeze of the narrative and her uncomplaining attitude in the face of hardship is occasionally interrupted by passages of terrible pain and trauma. When one of the gorillas, Digit, is killed by poachers, Fossey recorded her feelings in this deeply moving passage:
“There are times when one cannot accept the facts for fear of tearing one’s self apart. As I listened to the news of Ian, Digit’s entire life, from my first meeting with him as a playful ball of black fluff ten years earlier, flashed through my mind. From that moment on, I came to live inside an isolated part of myself.”
There would be many more gorilla deaths due to the activities of poachers. The reason so many gorillas die is that when poachers try to kidnap one of the youngest gorillas, all members of the family fight to the death to protect them. Fossey had many of these gorillas buried outside her cabin, where she too would eventually rest.
A social history of mountain gorillas
What is most remarkable about Gorillas in the Mist is that it presents a social history of the various groups of gorillas that Fossey studied and the family groupings within those groups. Fossey named all of the gorillas he followed and also described in detail their personalities and the strategies they used to survive and thrive in those groups. As you read about the different gorillas and their interactions (great gorilla personalities like Digit, Macho, Uncle Bert, Beethoven, Effie, Peanuts, and Coco), you almost begin to merge the gorillas with human personalities. Thus, Gorillas in the Mist almost reads like the story of a group of people. Of course, Fossey provides much of the other zoological information he learns about gorillas, such as dietary and mating habits, but overall the book deals with the personalities and politics of gorilla groups.
The reader leaves Gorillas in the Mist with a deep respect for Dian Fossey. Surely she must have been half crazy to take on the hard and physically demanding job of tracking gorillas. Only a totally obsessed person could put up with the conditions, the non-existent pay, and the constant fight with poachers. But as Fossey always told her students, her pay was the privilege of working with the gorillas. Fossey was no airheaded idealist either. He knew how poor the people of Rwanda were, how overcrowded and hard-pressed they were for the land, and that conservation of the gorilla population was the last of his pressing problems.
Gorillas in the Mist is a unique journey into the mountainous forests of Africa to meet a society of gorillas and experience their struggles and joys. It also raises many complex questions about the ethical treatment of animals and human responsibility for nature conservation.
Gorillas in the Mist, by Dian Fossey. Posted by Phoenix. ISBN: 9-780753-811412
