In the Kingdom of Gorillas
The Quest to Save Rwanda's Mountain Gorillas
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
When Bill Weber and Amy Vedder arrived in Rwanda to study mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey, the gorilla population was teetering toward extinction. Poaching was rampant, but it was loss of habitat that most endangered the gorillas. Weber and Vedder realized that the gorillas were doomed unless something was done to save their forest home. Over Fossey's objections, they helped found the Mountain Gorilla Project, which would inform Rwandans about the gorillas and the importance of conservation, while at the same time establishing an ecotourism project -- one of the first anywhere in a rainforest -- to bring desperately needed revenue to Rwanda.
In the Kingdom of Gorillas introduces readers to entire families of gorillas, from powerful silverback patriarchs to helpless newborn infants. Weber and Vedder take us with them as they slog through the rain-soaked mountain forests, observing the gorillas at rest and at play. Today the population of mountain gorillas is the highest it has been since the 1960s, and there is new hope for the species' fragile future even as the people of Rwanda strive to overcome ethnic and political differences.
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Dian Fossey brought world attention to Rwanda's endangered mountain gorillas in 1978, but the animals have survived largely because of the pioneering work of ecologists Weber and Vedder. Realizing that gorilla conservation was not a priority for a country facing staggering economic and development problems, they persuaded skeptical authorities that a program combining research, ecotourism and education could both protect these majestic primates and generate economy-boosting revenues. Their Mountain Gorilla Project, implemented over Fossey's objections, proved successful, with recent gorilla censuses showing dramatic population increases. Weber and Vedder's fascinating account of their years in Rwanda describes thrilling, sometimes heart-breaking gorilla encounters, and analyzes their painful relationships with Fossey with bracing honesty. But the book's larger, and more complex, subject is conservation in a war-ravaged postcolonial world struggling with increased competition for finite resources. Weber and Vedder ably portray Rwandan society, fraught with ethnic divisions and governmental corruption that not only threatened wildlife conservation but imperiled human safety. Their description of the 1994 genocide of Tutsis by Hutus based on reports from friends still in the country at the time is a chilling reminder that humans, too, are a fragile species. "We can't love animals or save wildlife," Weber and Vedder conclude, "without understanding the social, economic, and political context in which conservation occurs." Though they concede that "complete understanding is a myth," they argue persuasively for continued efforts to this end.
