Руандадағы Тау Гориллаларын Зерттеу Орталығы: Карисоке тарихы

Institute in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park

The Karisoke Research Center is a research institute in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park. It was founded by Dian Fossey on 24 September 1967 to study endangered mountain gorillas. Fossey located the camp in Rwanda's Virunga volcanic mountain range, between Mount Karisimbi and Mount Bisoke, and named it by combining the names of the two mountains. After Fossey's murder in December 1985, she was interred in the grounds of the institute. The camp subsequently continued to function under the auspices of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. In 2012, Karisoke moved its headquarters to a more modern facility in Musanze. At the time Fossey founded Karisoke, she feared that the mountain gorilla might become extinct by the end of the 20th century, as her mentor, Dr. Louis Leakey, had warned. A census published in 1981 found that the population had fallen to 242 individuals, from a 1960 estimate of 400–500. as of 2010, 45 years later, some 480 mountain gorillas are known to inhabit the Virunga mountains (according to a census), a significant increase. Karisoke survived Fossey's murder in 1985 as well as years of civil strife and also expanded tremendously over the past few decades.

In his book A Forest in the Clouds, John Fowler describes Fossey's remote mountain gorilla camp, Karisoke Research Center, a few years prior to her gruesome murder, telling the often shocking story of the unraveling of Fossey’s Rwandan facility as pressures mount in an effort to extricate Fossey from her domain. Instead of the intrepid scientist many admired in the pages of National Geographic magazine, Fowler shows Fossey as a chain smoking, hard drinking woman bullying her staff and students into submission in her efforts to hold onto to her reputation as scientist and savior of the mountain gorillas. [6]

The site was closed down during the genocide and civil war in Rwanda when most of the workers became refugees in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). Most Karisoke trackers lost their homes and possessions in the war, and some saw family members murdered. Some were imprisoned when they returned home. Rwandan staff continued to monitor the gorillas during this period whenever possible. By 1998 Karisoke’s expatriate staff had evacuated five times. The facility was destroyed three times, rebuilt twice, and eventually relocated to Musanze (formerly Ruhengeri). Despite the constant threat of war, Karisoke continued to upgrade its capacity for scientific research through new technology and new partnerships with local authorities and other conservation organizations. The gorillas survived the war years in good condition, despite the greatly increased number of snares set by poachers. The buildings, now in ruins and overgrown by vegetation, are still a monument to Fossey, her work and the first camp dedicated exclusively to the study of mountain gorillas. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund continues to operate the Karisoke Research Center, from its Regional Research Center headquarters in Musanze.

Thanks to Karisoke Research Center's active conservation program, the mountain gorillas of the Virungas are the only great ape species to have increased in number in recent decades.