Gentle Gorillas, Turbulent Times

Conservationists fear that Rwanda’s instability could endanger the gorillas’ survival. Others ask: How should the plight of the world’s rarest ape be weighed against more than 500,000 human dead?

This story appears in the October 1995 issue of National Geographic magazine.



The gorillas on the slopes of the Virunga volcanoes—some 300 animals—inhabit a small forested island surrounded by a sea of people. Twenty miles to the north is Uganda's Impenetrable Forest, now protected as Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, another island with perhaps 300 gorillas. These 285 square miles represent the entire world of the remaining mountain gorillas. Years ago, when I watched the gorillas' leisurely life, the animals eating and sleeping and tumbling in play, I was glad that they could not fathom their rarity and my concerns. We have a common past, but only humans have been given the mental power to worry about their fate.

Now the radiance of those months returned as intense memories. Once again Kay and I followed a swath of head-high vegetation until soft grumbles signaled contented gorillas ahead. We recalled old gorilla acquaintances: Big Daddy, the silverback leader of a large group, his power majestic even in repose, and Junior, a reckless young male that liked to linger near us. Once a female with an infant on her back had climbed with startling innocence upon a low branch to sit with me, probably the first time that a wild gorilla and a human were amicably side-by-side.

However, to me that gorilla study had meaning beyond the gathering of new facts. Gorillas had long been viewed as symbols of savagery, "exceedingly ferocious" in temper, as a 19th-century missionary phrased it. My task was not to capture or master them but solely to interpret their life. So I approached them with empathy and respect, wanting nothing from them but peace and proximity. And they accepted my presence with an astounding generosity of spirit. The recent decades have been a turning point, indeed a revolution, in our relationship with animals. Humans have begun to overcome cross-species barriers, achieving intimacy with humpback whales, chimpanzees, lions, mountain sheep, wolves. The gorillas of popular image were a fantasy. It pleases me that I helped change perceptions.

The gorilla, of course, is more than an animal. These apes are a primal part of human heritage. Our kin. We traveled down different evolutionary paths, the gorillas creating their own world, complete and coherent, and humans shaping theirs. No one who looks into a gorilla's eyes—intelligent, gentle, vulnerable—can remain unchanged, for the gap between ape and human vanishes; we know that the gorilla still lives within us. Do gorillas also recognize this ancient connection?

Our reveries that day on Mount Visoke were shattered by a walkie-talkie message from the lowlands: The Rwandan Patriotic Front—led by ethnic Tutsi—had invaded from Uganda. We were ordered to leave the mountains immediately. Led by primatologist Diane Doran, the director of Karisoke at the time, we descended to the town of Ruhengeri. Caught in the middle of a battle between rebels and the Rwandan Army the following day, we were evacuated by French paratroopers.





A new era in gorilla conservation began in 1978 when Amy Vedder and Bill Weber of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York arrived to establish gorilla tourism and an education program for the Rwandans. The following year their work was incorporated into the Mountain Gorilla Project, financed by an international consortium of conservation organizations. This integrated program of antipoaching, tourism, and education, all in cooperation with a receptive Rwandan government, had a marked impact on local attitudes.

A well-trained guard force maintained the national park. The education program created widespread awareness not just of the gorillas but also of the need to protect forests. The Virungas in Rwanda represent less than half of one percent of the country's land area but 10 percent of its water catchment. Without the forests to store water, streams would disappear during the dry season and deprive the dense human population of water. Four gorilla groups were soon habituated to tourists' viewing them at close range. Fees for tourists were high, yet so enthralled were visitors that gorilla viewing became at one time Rwanda's third largest earner of foreign exchange. Similar programs were later initiated on the Zaire and Uganda sides of the volcanoes.

The Mountain Gorilla Project also had an unforeseen impact. The people of Rwanda became proud of their apes. The gorillas became part of Rwanda's identity in the world, a part of the nation's vision of itself.

The 1980s were a golden time for the 30 or so gorilla groups on the Virunga volcanoes, and the population grew again, to about 320. The innovative program initiated by Amy Vedder and Bill Weber had become a classic story of conservation success, one that has been emulated in its approach many times.

Then the most recent civil war violated the gorillas' peaceful existence once again. Yet in spite of the turmoil, with soldiers of both factions traversing the forests, the gorillas have not been decimated. Indeed the Rwandan Patriotic Front expressed public concern for the gorillas' safety even while it was fighting. The new prime minister, Faustin Twagiramungu, has affirmed his country's commitment to the apes. Given the urgent and crushing social needs of Rwanda, this declaration is remarkable. For one species to fight for the survival of another, even in times of stress, is something new in evolution. In this, more than all our technology, lies our claim to being human.