Диан Фосси: Жизнь и судьба защитницы горных горилл.

American primatologist and conservationist (1932–1985)

Dian Fossey (/d//aɪ/'/æ//n/ dyAN; January 16, 1932 – ) was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name. Fossey was a leading primatologist, and a member of the "Trimates", a group of female scientists recruited by Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments, along with Jane Goodall who studies chimpanzees, and Birutė Galdikas, who studies orangutans. Fossey spent 20 years in Rwanda, where she supported conservation efforts, strongly opposed poaching and tourism in wildlife habitats, and made more people acknowledge the sapience of gorillas. Following the killing of a gorilla and subsequent tensions, she was murdered in her cabin at a remote camp in Rwanda in December 1985. Although Fossey's American research assistant was convicted in absentia, there is no consensus as to who killed her. Her research and conservation work helped reduce the downward population trend in mountain gorillas.

Fossey was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Hazel (née Kidd), a fashion model, and George Edward Fossey III, a real estate agent and business owner. Her parents divorced when she was six. Her mother remarried the following year, to businessman Richard Price. Her father tried to keep in contact, but her mother discouraged it, and all contact was subsequently lost. Fossey's stepfather, Richard Price, never treated her as his own child. He would not allow Fossey to sit at the dining room table with him or her mother during dinner. A man adhering to strict discipline, Richard Price offered Fossey little to no emotional support. Although, by 1950, Richard and Hazel would relocate with Dian to Marin County, the same county where her father George Fossey, now married to Mrs. Gladys Bove (née Kohler), resided. (George and Gladys would divorce by 1960. His third and final marriage would be to Kathryn Smith around 1959. Kathryn has mistakenly been cited as Dian's mother over the years.) Struggling with personal insecurity, Fossey turned to animals as a way to gain acceptance. Her love for animals began with her first pet goldfish and continued throughout her life. Fossey began her career in occupational therapy. She interned at hospitals in California and worked with tuberculosis patients. Fossey had become a prizewinning equestrian, which drew her to Kentucky in 1955, and a year later took a job as an occupational therapist at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville. Her shy and reserved personality helped her to work well with the children at the hospital. Fossey became close to her coworker Mary White "Gaynee" Henry, secretary to the hospital's chief administrator and the wife of one of the doctors, Michael J. Henry. The Henrys invited Fossey to join them on their family farm, where she worked with livestock daily and experienced the inclusive family atmosphere that had been missing for most of her life. During her free time she pursued her love of horses.

Fossey turned down an offer to join the Henrys on an African tour due to lack of finances, and went on a seven week visit to Africa. After studying Swahili and auditing a class on primatology during the eight months it took to get her visa and funding, Fossey arrived in Nairobi in December 1966. With the help of Joan Root and Leakey, Fossey acquired the necessary provisions and an old canvas topped Land Rover which she named "Lily". On the way to the Congo, Fossey visited the Gombe Stream Research Centre to meet Goodall and observe her research methods with chimpanzees. Root taught her basic gorilla tracking, and his tracker Sanwekwe later helped in Fossey's camp. Living in tents on mainly tinned produce, once a month Fossey would hike down the mountain to "Lily" and make the two hour drive to the village of Kikumba to restock. Advised by the Ugandan authorities not to return to Congo, after meeting Leakey in Nairobi, Fossey agreed with him against US Embassy advice to restart her study on the Rwandan side of the Virungas. Established up Mount Bisoke, the defined study area covered She became known by locals as Nyirmachabelli, or Nyiramacibiri, roughly translated as "The woman who lives alone on the mountain." Unlike the gorillas from the Congo side of the Virungas, the Karisoke area gorillas had never been partially habituated by Schaller's study; they knew humans only as poachers, and it took longer for Fossey to be able to study the Karisoke gorillas at a close distance. Fossey attempted to habituate the gorillas by copying their actions. Over time the gorillas became accustomed to Fossey. As she explained to the BBC in 1984: "I'm an inhibited persona and I felt that the gorillas were somewhat inhibited as well, so I imitated their natural, normal behaviour like feeding, munching on celery stalks or scratching myself." Fossey's research was funded by the Wilkie Foundation and the Leakey Home, with primary funding from the National Geographic Society. In 1970, she appeared on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, which brought tremendous attention to her work. Fossey was often hostile to Africans who entered into the protected area, even shooting roaming cattle.

While hunting had been illegal in the national park of the Virunga Volcanoes in Rwanda since the 1920s, the law was rarely enforced by park conservators, who were often bribed by poachers and paid a salary less than Fossey's own African staff. The official Rwandan national park guards, consisting of 24 staffers, did not eradicate any poachers' traps during the same period. The infant gorillas were given to Fossey by the park conservator of the Virunga Volcanoes for treatment of injuries suffered during their capture and captivity. With considerable effort, she restored them to a semblance of health. Over Fossey's objections, the gorillas were shipped to Cologne, where they lived nine years in captivity, both dying in the same month. While gorillas from rival groups on the mountains that were not part of Fossey's study had often been found poached five to ten at a time, and had spurred Fossey to conduct her own anti poaching patrols, Fossey's study groups had not been direct victims of poaching until Fossey's favorite gorilla, Digit, was killed in 1978. Later that year, the silverback of Digit's Group 4, named for Fossey's Uncle Bert, was shot in the heart while trying to save his son, Kweli, from being seized by poachers cooperating with the Rwandan park conservator. Kweli's mother, Macho, was also killed in the raid, but, as a result of Uncle Bert's intervention, Kweli was not captured; however, three year old Kweli died, slowly and painfully, of gangrene, from being brushed by a poacher's bullet. Digit was decapitated, and his hands cut off for ashtrays. He was twelve years old. Fossey later described Digit's killing as the "saddest event in all my years of sharing the daily lives of mountain gorilla." to raise money for anti poaching patrols. In a letter to a friend, she wrote, "We stripped him and spread eagled him and lashed the holy blue sweat out of him with nettle stalks and leaves " After her murder, Fossey's National Geographic editor, Mary Smith, told Shlachter that on visits to the United States, Fossey would "load up on firecrackers, cheap toys and magic tricks as part of her method to mystify the (Africans) in order to hold them at bay." She wore face masks and pretended to practice black magic to scare away poachers.

In the early morning of December 27, 1985, Fossey was discovered murdered in the bedroom of her cabin located at the far edge of the camp in the Virunga Mountains, Rwanda. Her body was found face up near the two beds where she slept, roughly 7 feet (2 m) away from a hole that her assailant(s) had apparently cut in the wall of the cabin. Wayne Richard McGuire, Fossey's last research assistant at Karisoke, was summoned to the scene by Fossey's house servant and found her bludgeoned to death, reporting that "when I reached down to check her vital signs, I saw her face had been split, diagonally, with one machete blow." The last entry in her diary read: in a site that she herself had constructed for her deceased gorilla friends. She was buried in the gorilla graveyard next to Digit, and near many gorillas killed by poachers. Memorial services were also held in New York City, Washington, D. C., and California.

After Fossey's murder, her entire staff were arrested. This included Rwandan Emmanuel Rwelekana, a tracker who had been fired from his job after he allegedly tried to kill Fossey with a machete, according to the government's account of McGuire's trial. All were later released, except Rwelekana, who was later found dead in prison, allegedly having hanged himself. and because no extradition treaty existed between the U. S. and Rwanda at that time, McGuire did not return to Rwanda. Thereafter, McGuire was largely absent from public notice until 2005, when news broke that he had been accepted for a job with the Health and Human Services division of the State of Nebraska. The job offer was revoked upon discovery of his relation to the Fossey case. Several subsequent books, including Farley Mowat's biography of Fossey, Woman in the Mists (New York, NY: Warner Books, 1987), have suggested alternative theories regarding her murder, including intimations that she may have been killed by financial interests linked to tourism or illicit trade. It has been alleged that Fossey had potentially damning evidence of gold smugglers, hence the ransacked cabin.

During her African safari, Fossey met Alexie Forrester, the brother of a Rhodesian she had been dating in Louisville; Fossey and Forrester later became engaged. In her later years, Fossey became involved with National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell after a year of working together at Karisoke, with Campbell promising to leave his wife.

Fossey had been troubled by lung problems from an early age and, later in her life, developed advanced emphysema brought on by years of heavy cigarette smoking. As the debilitating disease progressed—further aggravated by the high mountain elevation and damp climate—Fossey found it increasingly difficult to conduct field research, frequently experiencing shortness of breath and requiring the help of an oxygen tank when climbing or hiking long distances.

Fossey strongly opposed wildlife tourism, as gorillas are susceptible to human anthroponotic diseases like influenza from which they have limited immunity. Fossey reported several cases in which gorillas died because of diseases spread by tourists. She also viewed tourism as an interference into their natural wild behavior. as of 2016, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International promotes tourism, which they say helps to create a stable and sustainable local community dedicated to protecting the gorillas and their habitat. In addition to scientific research, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Ellen DeGeneres Campus also supports Rwanda's ecotourism sector.

After her death, Fossey's Digit Fund in the US was renamed the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. The Karisoke Research Center is operated by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, and continues the daily gorilla monitoring and protection that she started. Fossey is generally credited with reversing the downward trend in the mountain gorilla population. Due to poaching, gorilla populations declined from 450 in 1960 to just 250 in 1981. However, Fossey's "war on poaching" saw the final confirmed killing of a gorilla in 1983. By the late 1980s, the population had risen to 280. It continues to rise, as of 1987. Fossey's research, and the following publicity, spawned "gorilla tourism".

Universal Studios bought the film rights to Gorillas in the Mist from Fossey in 1985, and Warner Bros. Studios bought the rights to "the Dark Romance of Dian Fossey", a work by Harold T. P. Hayes, despite its having been severely criticized by Rosamond Carr. As a result of a legal battle between the two studios, a co production was arranged. Portions of the story and the Hayes article were adapted for the film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver, who played Fossey, along with Bryan Brown, and John Omirah Miluwi. The book covers Fossey's scientific career in great detail and omits material on her personal life, such as her affair with photographer Bob Campbell, played by Bryan Brown. In the film, the affair with Campbell forms a major subplot. The Hayes article preceding the movie portrayed Fossey as a woman obsessed with gorillas, who would stop at nothing to protect them. The film includes scenes of Fossey's ruthless dealings with poachers, including a scene in which she sets fire to a poacher's home. Weaver won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the film. Fossey is considered a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious sect that is the focus of Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood. In December 2017, Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist, a three hour series, aired on the National Geographic Channel. The series tells the story of Fossey's life, work, murder and legacy, using archive footage and still images, interviews with people who knew and worked with her, specially shot footage, and reconstruction. In A Forest in the Clouds: My Year Among the Mountain Gorillas in the Remote Enclave of Dian Fossey (Pegasus Books, 2018) John Fowler describes Fossey's remote mountain gorilla camp, Karisoke Research Center, a few years prior to her murder, telling the story of the unraveling of Fossey's Rwandan facility as pressures mount in an effort to extricate Fossey from her domain. Fowler represents Fossey as a chain smoking, hard drinking woman who bullied her staff and students in her efforts to hold on to her reputation as scientist and savior of the mountain gorillas.