Gorillas in the Mist

Gorillas in the Mist
by Dian Fossey Dr.

Gorillas in the Mist
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Book Summary Information

Author: Dian Fossey Dr.
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-10-06
ISBN: 061808360X
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Mariner Books

Book Reviews of Gorillas in the Mist

Book Review: Murder in the Mist Solved?
Summary: 5 Stars

After more than 15 years, the mastermind behind the gruesome and infamous murder of renowned gorilla researcher and protector, Dr. Dian Fossey whose life was portrayed in the 1988 movie "Gorillas in the Mist," may finally be in custody in Belgium. Protais Zigiranyirazo, the former Governor of the Ruhengeri province in Rwanda, brother-in-law of the assassinated Rwandan president, and one of the country's most wanted criminals for his creation of "death squads," which killed 800,000 in 1994, was captured by Belgian police while trying to flee Kenya on June 9, 2001.

Dr. Fossey observed the gorillas for 18 years in the Ruhengeri province when she was brutally murdered in her hut on December 27, 1985. Known for her vigilant pursuit of poachers, Dr. Fossey had made many enemies including Zigiranyirazo, who, it was reported, she was about to announce publicly as being behind poaching and smuggling rings of endangered species and gold in and out of Rwanda. Soon after her murder, Rwandan officials arrested one of her trackers for the murder. He then "apparently" committed suicide while in prison, but diplomats in Kigali believe he was secretly hanged before he could talk. Several months later, Wayne McGuire, her American research assistant, was accused by the Government of her murder but escaped capture when the US embassy warned him, enabling him to leave the country.

For years the FBI was unable to approach its prime suspect, Zigiranyirazo, because of his political connections, but that all changed when he was arrested in Belgium for war crimes.

The saga of Dian Fossey's murder may soon be resolved, but her work for the gorillas she fought so hard to preserve still goes on. The following story, reprinted from the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, is of Beetsme, one of the original gorillas observed by Dr. Fossey over 25 years ago.

Summary of Gorillas in the Mist

One of the most important books ever written about our connection to the natural world, GORILLAS IN THE MIST is the riveting account of Dian Fossey's thirteen years in a remote African rain forest with the greatest of the great apes. Fossey's extraordinary efforts to ensure the future of the rain forest and its remaining mountain gorillas are captured in her own words and in candid photographs of this fascinating endangered species. As only she could, Fossey combined her personal adventure story with groundbreaking scientific reporting in an unforgettable portrait of one of our closest primate relatives. Although Fossey's work ended tragically in her murder, GORILLAS IN THE MIST remains an invaluable testament to one of the longest-running field studies of primates and reveals her undying passion for her subject.

In 1963, an occupational therapist from Kentucky, in uncertain health and spirits, traveled to central Africa in the quixotic hope of seeing a mountain gorilla in its natural habitat. Dian Fossey had read everything she could about the reclusive and much-feared animal, and she returned from her trip convinced that most of the books were wrong.

During her seven-week stay in Africa, Fossey had a chance encounter with the famed primatologists Mary and Louis Leakey, who encouraged her to follow her dream of living among the mountain gorillas and learning their ways. In 1967 she did just that, setting up a camp on the slopes of the 14,000-foot Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda and studying four gorilla families there. Although it took them some time to accept Fossey's presence among them, she was immediately impressed by their peaceful nature and by their generous, guileless behavior--so unlike the images found in popular culture.

But, Fossey discovered, despite their peaceable way of life, the gorillas had many enemies in the form of poachers who hunted them for their hands, skins, and heads--ghastly remains sold to the tourist market. Much of Fossey's thoughtful but often rightly angry memoir Gorillas in the Mist is a well-reasoned plea for the protection of the gorillas and the suppression of the poachers' black market. That argument found a wide audience when her book was published in 1983, but Fossey's work remains unfinished: she was murdered, probably by those very poachers, in 1985, and today there are fewer than 650 mountain gorillas in the wild. To read Gorillas in the Mist is a first step for anyone concerned with their preservation, and that of other wild species everywhere. --Gregory McNamee

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