IN HER grave in the
Virunga Mountains of
Rwanda, Dian Fessey must
be stirring restlessly.

She became a world figure, at
least within the conservation
movement, through her
“fanatical’’ efforts to save
Africa’s handful of remaining
mountain goriilas.

Since her muvder in 1985, she
has become a legend, thanks in
part to books by authors such as
Farley Mowat and, most recently,
due to the popular movie Gorillas
In The Mist, starring Sigourney
Weaver, based on Fossey’s own
journals. I’m reluctant to see the
movie, since I have a bad feeling it
will just romanticize everything.

Visiting the gorillas of Virunga
has become a trendy thing to do.
The government of overpopulated
little Rwanda recently announced
that tourism, mainly based on the
new-found appeal of the gorillas,
has become its third largest
foreign-exchange earner, after ccf-
fee and tea.

An organization called the
Mountain Gorilla Project, fi-
nanced in part by the African
Wildlife Foundation, and at one
time or another by virtually every
international conservation
organization from the World
Wildlife Fund to National
Geographic, defends the exploita-
tion of the gorillas for tourism
bucks on the grounds that, cther-
wise, the gorillas would have all
been killed off by now.

The reason is simple enough. In
poverty-stricken Africa, poachers
tange everywhere and corruption
at the highest levels is com-
monplace.

Over there, conservation isn’t a
relatively polite matter involving
protestors, petitions and lobbyists,
as it is here.

In Africa, conservation amounts
to guerrilla war.

That’s what Dian Fossey did.
She mounted a guerrilla war to
save the gorillas. And in the end,
she was a victim of that war. She
was murdered, yes, but we don’t
speak of soldiers or guerrilla
fighters as being murdered.

We speak of them being killed in
battle, which is what happened to
Fossey. She was hacked to death
by an assassin with a machete one
night inside the fortress she had
erected in the Virunga Mountains
from which, for years, she had
launched armed patrols against
poachers.

I've just finished reading
Mowat's book, Virunga, The Pas-
sion of Dian Fossey. It is a moving
and compelling account of a
strong-willed and fearless woman
— the sort of woman one would be
honored 1o have one's daughters
grow up to be.

Trained initially as a rehabilita-

Bos

HUNTER

tion therapist specializing in
autistic children, Fossey more or
less stumbled into her destiny, as is
so often the case with greatness.

Attracted by her readings to
Africa, she scrimped and saved for
a tour that turned out to be a
disaster except that, along the way,
she ran into the great paleoan-
thropologist, Dr. Louis Leakey,
the man who traced human origins
to East Africa.

Evidently making an impression
on Leakey, she started a cor-
respondence with him and even-
tually re-connected with the aging
scientist when he was giving a lec-
ture in America. Leakey was trying
to start up a gorilla research pro-
ject in Rwanda, and he considered
Fossey ideal for the job.

For one thing, he had found that
women were far better at relating
with wild animals (perhaps because
of their experience with men?),
and for another, a background in
rehabilitation was perfect.

What he had in mind was that
Fossey should actually try to make
contact with the legendary great
apes, and, if she survived, begin a
serious research program.

Scarcely anyone suspected then
what gentle creatures the gorilias
were, Imagine the courage it re-
quired for a woman to go into the
most remote reaches of the Dark
Continent and come face-to-face
with the ferocious Mountain
Kings, whom the natives had
feared for all of history.

Fossey not only made contact
with the gorillas, she befriended
them. They adapted to her
presence so well that they literally
played games with her, shared
food with her, allowed her to
babysit their infants, and in their
own limited but definitely com-
municative fashion, talked to her,

This should have been a story
with an enormously informative
and happy ending, but Fossey
quickly ran into several brutal
tealities of the modern world.

The gorilias were being hunted
down and killed or, if they were
young, captured, to meet the de-
mandz of the gruesome interna-
tional traffic in rare animals and
their parts: skulls wanted for
museum displays, hands and feet
for exotic ashtrays, infant apes for
European zoos, especially in
Holland, West Germany and
Spain, the worst culprit of all.

Over the course of a decade,
Dian Fossey came to realize that it
was more important to save the

gorillas than to study them. For at
the rate the poachers and corrupt
Rwandan officials were going,
soon there would be no apes left to
study, except in captivity. And
how long they would survive
behind bars -~ or whether it was
worth it — was a moot point.

To be continued @

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5 ~ Wednesday, January 4, 1989 - North Shore News
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Library has lined up programs for 980-4424,

pm, chen our to seit 3s | NORTH SHORE’S LARGEST
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Storytime with a list of New Year’s
resolutions, and join in stories,
songs and games.

Brrr! It’s snowing! is the theme
of Pyjama Storytime on Wednes-
day, Jan. 18 at 7 p.m. There will
be stories, songs and games for
four to eight year olds, and coffee
to warm the hearts of parents.

On Saturday, Jan. 21 at 1:30
p.m., students from grades 3 to 7
can learn all about being a
reporter. Timothy Renshaw of the
North Shore News will be guest
speaker. Pre-registration is re-
quired for this event.

Christie Kennedy, coordinator
of Capilano College Music School,
will present Pace piano students,
Kodaly-Orff music for the very
young and Suzuki strings on
Saturday, Jan. 28 at 1:30 p.m,
Everyone is welcome to attend this
concert.

The North Vancouver City
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GOLD WANTED

We buy karat gold; old
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THE GOLDPOST

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NO REASONABLE OFFER WILL
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987-8731

Buy your Silk Flowers
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Purchase one of cur

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