In the heart of Central Africa are the Virungas – a range of rain forest clad volcanoes towering fifteen thousand feet that are the only habitat of the rare mountain gorilla. This chain, for twenty years, was also the setting for a drama of intrigue, love and murder known as the Gorilla Wars – a tale of the courage of Dian Fossey pitted against a powerful array of forces.

The Year of the Gorilla

‘The gorilla, of course, is more than an animal,’ wrote Dr George B. Schaller in The Year of the Gorilla. ‘These apes are a primal part of human heritage. Our kin. We travelled down different evolutionary paths, the gorilla creating their own world, complete and coherent, and humans shaping theirs.

‘No one who looks into a gorillas eyes – intelligent, gentle, vulnerable – can remain unchanged, for the gap between ape and human vanishes; we know that the gorilla still lives within us. Do gorillas also recognise this ancient connection?’

The Gorillas of the Virungas

‘The terrain was unbelievable,’ wrote the beautiful Dian Fossey of her first experience of the Virungas as a tourist in 1963 to view the mountain gorillas that had so intrigued her in Schallers book, ‘almost straight up, and we had to hang on vines to get along or go on hands and knees. For a long time we found no sign of gorillas, but then we came upon a bedding place where thirteen of them had slept the night before.

‘Sound preceded sight, and odour preceded both in the form of an overwhelming, musty, barnyard yet humanlike stench. Then the thin mountain air was shattered like window glass by a high-pitched series of deafening screams. Nothing can possibly prepare one for such a terrifying avalanche of sound and we all froze where we stood hip deep in a soaking-wet bed of stinging nettles surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable wall of foliage. For a minute the chill, fog-dripping forest was unbelievably silent, then it was rent by even more ferocious screams punctuated by thunderous, drumlike tattoos. Once more we froze until the forest was hushed.’

Mountain Kings

‘I was motioned forward and I crept to peer through an opening. There they were: the devilmen of native stories; the basis of the King Kong myth; the last of the Mountain Kings of Africa.

‘The group of about six adult gorillas stared apprehensively back at us through the opening in the wall of vegetation. A phalanx of enormous, half-seen, looming black faces surmounted by shiny black patent-leather faces with deep-set warm brown eyes. They were big and imposing, but not monstrous at all. Somehow they looked more like members of a picnic party surprised by interlopers. Their bright gazes darted nervously from under their heavy brows as they tried to determine if we were dangerous.

‘I left Mt. Mikeno next day, never doubting that somehow I would return to learn more about the Virunga gorillas.’

Deep Misgivings

That prophecy was fulfilled in 1966 when Dr Louis Leakey, the celebrated palaeontologist who was directing research into the world’s great apes as part of his exploration into the birth of man, appointed Fossey to start a long-term study of the mountain gorillas found only on the slopes of the eight volcanoes strung between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.

Leakey had met Fossey by chance during her earlier tour of Africa and to say her selection roused deep misgivings with his funders, the Wilkie Foundation and National Geographic, would be an understatement. Not least of their concerns were her near total lack of zoological experience – she dropped out in her second year of veterinarian studies; her age – she was in her mid-thirties; and her frail health which led one doctor to recommend she avoid all travel and high altitudes. But Leakey had fallen madly in love with this deeply enigmatic woman and primeval impulse triumphed.

Woman in the Mist

Raised in a disciplinarian household, the animal-loving Fossey, who subsequently qualified as an occupational therapist, was practising at Korsair Children’s Hospital when approached by Leakey. While not a conventional beauty, men were drawn to her – it was in the eyes. ‘She was exceptionally tall and slender,’ wrote Farley Mowat in Woman in the Mist, ‘with gleaming dark hair, intense and searching eyes, strong features, and a coltish grace.’

Rosamund Carr, an American expatriate living in Rwanda, who met Fossey at a luncheon hosted by an ambassador, recalled that the ambassador’s wife warned her that Dian was very odd. On meeting Dian she noted an ‘absolutely wild look in her eyes.’

Feral analogies certainly fitted Fossey’s cussing, mercurial, passionate personality, but were misplaced when describing her fragile physical being. She suffered from acrophobia, bipolar disorder, insomnia, a host of allergies and chest complaints, aggravated by heavy smoking and drinking binges, that left her scarred lungs ‘looking like a street map of Los Angeles superimposed on a street map of New York’. Later she would include chronic fatigue, failing eyesight, sciatica in her right hip, brittle bones and a weak heart in her compendia of medical problems.

A Gift from God

These ailments were minor impediments to a remarkable woman convinced of her destiny. ‘This African research project is a gift from God,’ wrote a Trappist monk friend. ‘She will never be satisfied with the common, ordinary things most girls of her day are satisfied with. She requires some truly stupendous accomplishments before she will be at ease on earth. She will never be perfectly satisfied until she is the saint she longs to be.’

Fossey, initially, was sent to the Parc des Virungas in the Congo. ‘The return climb up Mt. Mikeno was really poignant,’ she enthused. ‘There were vistas along the trail that left me speechless with their majesty. The far sweep of volcanoes seemed never to end.’

Within a few days she made her first contact with a gorilla family. ‘The entire slope was in the open and here we encountered an immature adult male – a blackback – who sat watching us but displayed no fear. He gave small hoots, more like burps, beat his chest and grabbed branches. Between three and five minutes elapsed between chest beatings, during which time two older females appeared. Then the silverback boss of the family appeared from behind the young male after screaming wraaagh several times.’

Doing things Differently

Fossey, from the outset, made it clear she would do things her way – differently. She was convinced that to effectively study gorillas it was essential to habituate them so she could observe them from birth, through changes in group dynamics, to death that required an emotional bonding in order to conduct scientific research.

Rather than habituate the sceptical scientific community to her plan, she chose her way – confrontation. ‘Data gathering surely is important, but things haven’t changed that much from the days scientists shot everything in sight to gather data. They don’t seem to care if the study species perish, just so long as they get all the facts about them first.’ The die was cast.

Gorilla Acceptance

Fossey’s method was a blend of what she garnered from Schaller’s work and her experience as an occupational therapist. ‘My objective was to take up where Schaller left off, to form more intimate contacts with gorilla groups and individuals, to observe from close up their behaviour – and to do so in such a way that my presence did not affect that behaviour. To accomplish this I decided, in a word, to act like a gorilla.’

But it was Korsair that taught her how to approach her subjects. ‘I learned to avert my face and abase myself to the gorillas from working with autistic children and adults, whom I found I could best reach by hiding my face, assuming an obsequious posture, and feigning interest in stuffed toys and live pets. Such “neglect” never failed to elicit responses from patients suffering from severe withdrawal, but all wanting inside themselves to make contact without knowing how. It meant, I think, that I posed no sort of threat and therefore was safe to approach.’

It was the gorillas acceptance of her that allowed her to make the first of many important observations. ‘Dian was beginning to suspect that play was an aspect of gorilla behaviour generally concealed from human observers,’ noted Mowat, ‘and for that reason had in the past been accorded far too little importance in studies of the apes’ daily lives.’

Political Turmoil

Political turmoil in Congo, however, forced her to withdraw and establish a new research centre in Rwanda’s Parc des Volcans. The site she selected, Karisoke, was in a rolling saddle between Mt Karisimbi, Mt Mikeno and Mt Visoke. ‘The clearing,’ described Mowat, ‘was richly carpeted with grass, surrounded by heavy forest, and dotted with ancient, moss-draped hagenia trees. A swift-flowing stream tumbled through the meadow. It was an ideal campsite. It was also the most beautiful place Dian had ever seen.’

While she enthralled by her surrounds, she was appalled by the ‘human aggrandisement’ that threatened this Eden. Herders grazed cattle on the slopes, trees were cut for timber, park forest cleared for a Common Market aided cash-crop scheme, and poachers that ranged freely in search of live gorillas for European zoos or dead as trophies for collectors.

Declaring War

Her first act was to declare war on the cattle herders and poachers who had ranged the Virunga slopes since time immemorial. So passionate was her campaign of ‘active conservation’ that she was accused of racism by other conservationists.

But she was no racist. On the contrary, she insisted Africa and its people be judged by the same set of standards as everyone else. Refusing to shrink before her growing band of detractors she fired her own salvo – accusing those involved in the ‘conservation game’ of being mired in conflicts of interest, misusing donor funds, dispensing self-serving advice, and indulging in patronising self promotion in their scheme ‘to teach Africans how to conserve their continent’.

That line in the sand was entrenched when Fossey shot to prominence in 1970 – and the public placed themselves foursquare on her side.

Group 4

Since relocating she had identified nine families. Her work with the family she called Group 4 culminated in an article that appeared in National Geographic and was accompanied by a spread of photographs by her sometime lover, Bob Campbell – a married man.

‘I lay back in the foliage to appear as harmless as possible and slowly extended my hand,’ she wrote in that story. ‘I held it palm up at first, as the palms of an ape and a human hand are more similar than the backs of the hand. When I felt Peanuts recognised this “object”, I slowly turned my hand over.

‘Peanuts seemed to ponder accepting my hand, a familiar but strange object extended to him. Finally he came a step closer and, extending his own hand, gently touched his fingers to mine. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time a wild gorilla has ever come so close to “holding hands” with a human being.

‘Peanuts sat down and looked at my hand for a moment longer. He stood and gave vent to his excitement by a whirling chest beat, then went off to rejoin his group. I expressed my own happy excitement by crying.’

Unscrupulous Campaign

It was a double-edged sword. The story was a sensation and her celebrity permitted her to loosen her dependence on Leakey. But she also found herself buried under an avalanche of paper. It also heralded the intensification of the campaign against her as unscrupulous politicians and conservationists circled to hijack her prominence. The strike was at her heart.

Group 4 treated Fossey as a member of their family and among this group was a blackback, Digit, named because of a twisted finger. ‘Dian,’ wrote Mowat, ‘was often mobbed by the youngsters of group 4, who treated her almost as one of themselves. Digit in particular seemed to welcome her presence. On such occasions note-taking would be forgotten and Dian would revel in the pure joy of being accepted. She groomed her friends and allowed them to groom her. She dozed with them in the sun. She tickled the infants and exchanged commiserative belches with the older females.’

Death of Digit

‘I received the impression that Digit really looked forward to the daily contacts,’ she related in her book Gorillas in the Mist. ‘If I was alone he often invited play by flopping over onto his back, waving stumpy legs in the air, and looking at me smilingly as if to say, “How can you resist me?” At such times, I fear, my scientific detachment dissolved.’

Less high-minded people, however, had noted that gorillas were great fundraisers – particularly if the news was bad. In an outrage in 1978, on the eve of the much-publicised arrival of David Attenborough to film an episode of Life on Earth, Digit was killed and his body mutilated.

‘The effect on Dian was catastrophic,’ wrote Mowat. ‘No previous experience had ever dealt her so savage a blow or imposed worse mental anguish. And no other conceivable disaster could have fired her to such a pitch of passion as did this butchery.’

The Digit Fund

She initiated a joint plan to raise money, in a campaign known as the Digit Fund, to fight the war on behalf of the gorillas while exerting pressure on the Rwandan government. ‘With this beginning,’ wrote Mowat, ‘Dian took the first deliberate step into the limbo reserved for those who, with the best intentions, trespass against the sanctity of duly constituted authority. She embarked upon a course of action that would eventually cleave an unbridgeable abyss between her and much of the scientific community, of which she was a maverick member, as well as between her and those fund-raising conservation organisations that value respectability at any cost.’

It was with this latter group that the greatest calamity waited. As she sat on a mountainside in far-off Rwanda she was unable to co-ordinate the Digit Fund – turning rather to established fundraising organisations. In Britain and the United States the vast sums of money raised in Digit’s name never reached her – diverted, often fraudulently, to projects over which she had no control and that she at best regarded as trivial and at worst as dangerous to the survival of gorillas.

‘Digit has died in vain,’ she seethed.

Fossey’s State of Mind

Worse, large sums of these funds found their way into the hands of her enemies who upped the ante to the point where the United States Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, became involved. Hand-in-hand a campaign of gossip about her drinking, mental capacity and competency was orchestrated.

‘By mid-March 1979,’ wrote Mowat, ‘Dian’s difficulties had multiplied to the point where they seemed almost insupportable as the chief grant givers and the consortium of conservation agencies choked off the flow of funds that paid the staff and maintained the infrastructure.’

And victory appeared to belong to her enemies when she was forced to take up a position at Cornell University and hand over the reins of Karisoke.

A Wounded Animal

‘Like a wounded and exhausted animal,’ wrote Mowat, ‘she withdrew herself until she could heal her hurts and renew both her physical and psychic strength. Cornell provided the refuge she so badly needed. But Dian never intended it to become a permanent shelter for the rest of her days. She saw it as a sanctuary from which, in due course, she would emerge to renew the fight for what she believed in – and for what was hers.’

When she returned to the fray she launched a bitter, highly effective campaign against her enemies now on the mountainside and making a complete hash of what she built. By 1982 those that had opposed her were admitting they had erred and in June 1983 she returned in triumph to retake Karisoke.

‘I know now that I’ve truly come home,’ she declared after reacquainting herself with the gorillas. ‘No one will ever force me out of here again.’

The Price of Victory

She paid a heavy price for victory. The day after Christmas, 1985, someone known to her entered her cabin and ‘split her skull diagonally from the forehead, across her nose and down one cheek to the corner of her mouth with her own bush knife’.

‘Some people wanted to send her poor body back to the States,’ recalled Carr as Fossey was buried alongside her beloved Digit. ‘What a terrible thing that would have been. But Dian wouldn’t have it – her spirit wouldn’t have it. They hadn’t been able to force her out of the Virungas while she was alive. They couldn’t do it now she was dead.’

‘As for the mountain kings,’ concluded Mowat, ‘who can say what awaits them at our hands? But if they do survive, it will be due in no small measure to the dedication of a woman who was in love with life – with all of life – a woman who did what all great lovers must always do: who gave herself completely to those she loved.’                  

Gorillas in the Mist

The story of Dian Fossey was released on film in 1988. Directed by Michael Apted, it earned Sigourney Weaver a Golden Globe and a best actress nomination at the Oscar’s the following year. Weaver was so moved by the story that she joined the Digit Fund, now renamed The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. She is today the honorary chairperson.