Saving One of the World's Most Endangered Primate

"There would be no mountain gorillas in the Virungas today", the late Robinson McIlvaine once said, "were it not for Dian Fossey's tireless efforts over many years". McIlvaine served as U.S. Ambassador to Kenya before becoming director of AWF's African operations and then AWF president, and he knew Fossey personally.

An American, Fossey originally set up camp in 1966 in Congo to study mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei), financed by paleontologist Louis B. Leakey. Civil unrest in the area forced her to relocate to Rwanda's Volcano National Park. During 1967, AWF provided regular support to Fossey; a year later, the National Geographic Society joined AWF in supporting the project.

When several gorillas were killed in 1978, including Digit, a male gorilla in one of Fossey's study groups that had been made famous through National Geographic magazine articles and films. AWF joined forces with Fauna and Flora International and the World Wide Fund for Nature to offer further protection for the remaining mountain gorillas, forming the Mountain Gorilla Project. Jean Pierre von der Becke, a Belgian, was hired as project manager.

In addition to funding salaries and vehicles, AWF supplied the project with uniforms for guards and rangers, along with camping gear and communication equipment. In 1980, Mark Condiotti joined the AWF team to work with AWF education officers Conrad and Rosalind Aveling and others on habituating gorilla groups to humans to enable gorilla-based tourism. The project achieved steady success: In 1982, tourist fees more than covered the cost of park operations.

After Fossey's murder in 1986, vigilance over the gorillas increased, and a census the next year indicated that the gorilla population was growing. As of 1989, income from tourism became Rwanda's largest earner of foreign exchange, making protection of the gorillas a national priority.

Often hailed as the most successful conservation effort in Africa, the Mountain Gorilla Project came of age in 1990, when AWF transferred stewardship to the Rwandan government. AWF continued to assist in education projects around the park and supported antipoaching patrols. AWF soon formed the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), a regional strategy to protect the mountain gorillas, in collaboration with Fauna and Flora International and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The outbreak of civil conflict in Rwanda in October 1990 spilled over to the park, signaling the beginning of a decade of intensified threats to the mountain gorillas whose habitat was already endangered by clearing trees for agriculture and the threat of transmittal of disease by a fast-growing human population. Belgian ecologist Jose Kalpers directed IGCP during this critical period.

In spite of civil wars and political instability during this past decade in all three nations; Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, IGCP has enhanced conservation of the last 650 mountain gorillas in the Virunga mountains and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The project is a model for international cooperation as wardens and rangers from countries in conflict work together so closely that they become friends as well as respected colleagues.

IGCP facilitates regular regional collaborations, such as joint border patrols by Rwandan, Congolese and Ugandan rangers. IGCP also has put in place strong regional collaboration in areas of ecological monitoring, tourism and work with surrounding communities.