FOSSEY, Dian

(b. 16 January 1932 in Fairfax, California; d. 24 December 1985 in Ruhengeri, Rwanda), primatologist and conservationist who greatly advanced knowledge of the mountain gorilla.

Fossey was the only child of George Fossey III and Kitty Fossey. George, a frustrated insurance salesman, left when Fossey was a child. After a divorce Kitty married Richard Price, a contractor. By all accounts Fossey seems to have had a relatively unhappy childhood and never completely reconciled with her mother or her stepfather. After graduating from high school she enrolled at the University of California, Davis, in 1950 to study veterinary medicine. Doing poorly in the science courses, she dropped out in her second year. Returning to college to study occupational therapy, she graduated with a B.A. from San Jose State University in 1954.

Eager to put space between her and her tense family life, Fossey took a position at Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital, in Louisville, Kentucky. There she became friends with Mary White Henry, secretary to the hospital director. The Henry family provided her with inroads into Louisville society, although she seemed happiest with her patients and around animals. Through the Henrys she met some young African planters and became fascinated with that continent. George Schaller's book The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior (1963) introduced her to the mountain gorilla.

Determined to visit Africa, Fossey mortgaged her future salary to the hospital. In 1963, in Kenya, she met the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey. When Fossey expressed an interest in gorillas, he suggested she consider a long-term study of those little-known primates (the British ethologist Jane Goodall was then working with chimpanzees).

Fossey tried to get stories of her trip published in popular magazines, and finally the Louisville Courier-Journal accepted three articles. In 1966 she met Leakey again when he gave a lecture in Louisville. Leakey remembered their previous meeting (possibly because, ill from the pain of a sprained ankle, she had vomited on one of his fossils) and again raised the possibility of a long-term study, promising to find financial support.

After support was arranged from the Wilkie Foundation (and later from the National Geographic Society), Fossey quit her job and arrived at Kababa, in Zaire, in January 1967. She made her first sighting of gorillas later that month. Although her work progressed well, she had some difficulties with camp workers and with herders and poachers in the area. By July the political situation in Zaire had deteriorated so badly that she was detained on more than one occasion, ultimately fleeing to Rwanda. Later stories of her mistreatment and possible rape seem to have been exaggerations.

With Leakey's approval, Fossey transferred her work to Karisoke, just across the mountains from Kababa. By September the new center was established and her work progressed rapidly throughout the next year. From the start she was determined to end herding and poaching in the park. For about five months, early in 1968, she did little active research as she nursed two baby gorillas that had been injured in being captured for a German zoo.

After a year at Karisoke, Fossey returned to the United States, stopping on the way in Cambridge, England, to arrange for doctoral studies under the primate specialist Robert Hinde. Returning to Africa after three months at Cambridge, she made international headlines, including a cover story in National Geographic.

At the same time her personal life grew increasingly complicated. By December 1971 she had had an abortion to terminate a pregnancy that resulted from an affair with a research student. When that relationship began to sour Fossey increasingly turned to alcohol. In addition, her interaction with most of the students who worked at Karisoke was strained. She also began to develop less-than-friendly relations with the park directors and much of the local population (the African camp workers seem to have been an exception). On one occasion, determined to keep herders out of the park, she kidnapped a cow. In 1973 she began shooting cattle.

In the early years of the 1970s, she made occasional lecture trips and worked on her doctorate. In 1976 she earned her Ph.D. in primatology from Cambridge and also participated in a primate symposium with Goodall and Birute Galdikas, a Canadian primatologist who had been chosen by Leakey to conduct a study of orangutans in Borneo.

By this time Fossey's work in Africa as a scientist seems to have declined considerably. Part of the decline was due to her health; she suffered from various allergies, asthma (although she continued to smoke), broken bones because of calcium loss, an irregular heartbeat, and eye problems. At times she had to use an oxygen inhaler. Nevertheless, she increased her battles against poachers. On one foray she burned the possessions of a poacher and kidnapped a child. As a result she was spending less time in the field. Her notoriety increased when poachers killed Digit, one of her study gorillas. She used his death to raise funds for antipoaching patrols, though most of the funds were channeled to organizations for which she had little sympathy.

In 1980 Fossey left Africa to take a year-long position at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. While there she worked on her book, Gorillas in the Mist, which was ultimately published in 1983. Her year in the United States was punctuated by a pair of symposiums with the other two "primate ladies" (Goodall and Galdikas) and the publication of some scientific papers. All this while, though, she was in torment about Karisoke, which was under the direction of a former student with whom she had strong disagreements.

Her final years saw little scientific advancement. By now she was persona non grata with park authorities, many conservation groups, and most of her former students. Her health continued to decline, and research seemed far less important than her antipoaching patrols. Because gorilla tourism had brought money to impoverished Rwanda, there were moves to keep her out of the country. When at Karisoke she was seldom able to visit the gorillas.

On Christmas Eve of 1985 Fossey was murdered in her cabin at the Karisoke Research Center. Eventually, Wayne McGuire (her latest student) and Emmanuel Rwelekana (a tracker she had fired) were charged with the murder. McGuire had returned to the United States but was convicted of her killing in absentia. Rwelekana committed suicide while awaiting trial. Many observers were dissatisfied with the result of the investigation and trial, believing that she was killed by poachers, herders, or Rwandan officials who wanted her out of the country. On 31 December 1985 Fossey was buried next to the gorilla graveyard she had established at Karisoke.

Fossey's career as a scientist was relatively short, yet in that time she greatly increased the world's knowledge of the largest primate and eradicated their false reputation for fierceness. She triggered international sympathy for endangered animals in Africa and spurred conservation efforts. The strategy of ecotourism as a source of national wealth developed from her popular writings. Yet her personal life remains shrouded in mist, much like her favorite study subjects.

Fossey's own account of her life with mountain gorillas is in Gorillas in the Mist (1983), which was the basis of a 1988 film. Though mawkish and sentimental, the biography by Farley Mowat, Woman in the Mists (1987), is quite usable. Less critical is the section on Fossey in Bettyann Kevles, Watching the Wild Apes (1976). Although also sympathetic, Harold T. P. Hayes, The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey (1990), is more aware of some of the more controversial aspects of her life. There is a section on Fossey's work and death in Alex Shoumatoff, African Madness (1988). National Geographic published accounts of her work in "More Years with Mountain Gorillas" (Oct. 1971) and "The Imperiled Mountain Gorilla" (Apr. 1981). Obituaries are in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times (both 29 Dec. 1985) and in the Chicago Tribune (30 Dec. 1985).

Art Barbeau