32 SMITHSONIAN | April 2020
today one of the most beloved wild animals on the plan-
et, were little known four decades ago when the American
primatologist Dian Fossey, commenting on a spate of bru-
tal killings by poachers, warned that only around 220 of
the animals were left. “The mountain gorilla faces a grave
danger of extinction—primarily because of the encroach-
ments of native man upon its habitat,” she wrote. Her 1983
book, Gorillas in the Mist, an affecting blend of fi eld jour-
nal and memoir, and especially the 1988 feature movie of
the same name, brought global attention to the animal’s
plight. By then, as all the world was shocked to learn, Fos-
sey, too, had been murdered , in her cabin in Karisoke, a
research site in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda.
A village on the
edge of Volca-
noes National
Park in Rwanda.
Conservationists
and offi cials
work with
residents to en-
hance mountain
gorilla survival.Mountain gorillas,
She would not be the last person to put
her life on the line for this noble creature: In
the past 20 years, more than 175 park rang-
ers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s
Virunga National Park, home to many of
the world’s mountain gorillas, have been
killed in the line of duty, with eight gunned
down in 2018 and another killing last year.
The park’s director himself, Emmanuel de
Merode, survived an attempted assassina-
tion in 2014, just hours after submitting a
report on illegal oil exploration in the park.
Years after Fossey sounded the alarm, the
killing of mountain gorillas continued. In
2007, Congolese mafi a henchmen executed
seven of the animals, reportedly to discour-
age offi cials from enforcing bans on produc-
ing charcoal in the park. Brent Stirton’s pho-
tograph of park rangers carrying the giant
corpse of the silverback Senkwekwe stunned