Dian Fossey conservation efforts of the mountain gorillas is something a kin to legendary .She had formed a small force with an intent to help guard mountain gorillas against human beings. Dian threatened the hunters together with everyone who helped them in their poaching activities. However, not everyone was happy with her efforts. Some people condemned her very much for the way she treated hunters. For example, Rwandan officials were very much opposed to her efforts of controlling an area that she did not own. Still, some experts of animals heavily criticized Dian Fossey’s very strong emotional attachment to the gorillas. Besides this, these experts also questioned the rationale behind her work as a scientist.
The whole issue of Doctor Dian Fossey activities towards the conservation of the mountain gorillas has both positive and negative bearings. In my essay, I am going to discuss various points for supporting and then opposing the statement as to whether Dr. Fossey should just have restricted her activities to pure research or not. Although Dian Fossey efforts were recommendable and exemplary, she deserved to be highly (highly, modifies the verb “deserved”) criticized for the negative effects of her anti-poaching efforts .Still, Fossey was very committed
In support of Dian’s Effort in Totality
My support for Dian Fossey’s was right not only to engage in research but also in the anti poaching activities for various reasons Dian Fossey managed to catch the attention of the whole world by exposing the facts about poaching activities. From her efforts many organizations have come up. These organizations are not only carrying out research on the conservation and making publications on the same but are also engaging in various endeavors so as to eradicate poaching.
Another great contribution that Dian Fossey made was to de-mystify the perception that the gorillas are very vicious monsters that need to be eliminated from the earth surface. She did this through spending most of her time observing the mountain gorillas. It was a long held perception that the gorillas are nasty (nasty is an adjective modifying the noun gorillas) and vicious animals. From the whole efforts of hers, people came to realize how friendly these animals can be while at the same time. Still this has changed people’s attitude towards the poaching of the mountain gorillas.’ People no longer see the animals that need to be eliminated altogether from the earth surface, but as endangered species that need to be protected by all possible ways including banning their poaching( Fossey,1988).’
Dian kept a well written record of all her activities towards the conservation of the mountain gorillas. She asserts that the understanding of the value of all kinds of life, you will think less about what is past, and think instead about the protection of the future. Some of these activities
include facts about how poaching greatly affects the lives of the mountain gorillas, and the potentiality of their total extinction. These facts about her fight against poaching have been adapted by many organizations involved in the wildlife conservation. The overall effect of this has been an enhanced effort not only towards the conservation of the mountain gorillas but also other endangered wild animals.
Dian’s passion for the mountain gorillas has managed influence many people to continue with the duty of protecting this very magnificent and vital animals. Although her methods of ensuring that this realized were outrageous, she still ensured that her works of ensuring the conservation of mountain the mountain gorillas reached and influenced many people through her publications and through allowing her worked to works to be documented in movies.
Against Dian’s efforts in Totality
The first case against her whole effort was her bid to stop tourism. Dian Fossey strongly opposed tourism. She based her opposition on the claim that the gorillas are very pretty susceptible to human diseases like such as the flu for which they lack immunity. She reported many and varied cases in which the animals died as a result of diseases spread by tourists. Another reason for her opposition to tourism was her view that tourism, as an activity, was interference into the whole natural and wild behavior of the gorillas. Her last reason for objecting tourism of the habitats of the gorillas was the tourist programs, usually paid for by international organizations for animal conservation, which interfere with not only her research but also the peace of the mountain gorillas’ habitat. However, this stand of hers does not consider the importance of tourism in
helping to create and develop a stable, and sustainable or local community devoted to activities of safeguarding the gorillas in their habitats. She asserts her devotion to the gorillas, for example by saying “I believe it was at this time that I would someday return to Africa to study the gorillas of the mountains (Chap.1, p.7)
She was too ruthless with the hunters. In her resolve to totality eliminate the other otherwise illegal act of poaching of mountain gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes in Rwanda; some of Doctor Fossey’s methods were quite absurd. There are claims that Fossey actually stripped naked and beat Rwandan villagers who she suspected of engaging in poaching of the gorillas, an act which she loathed so much. She is said to have beaten them with stinging nettles which took off these villagers’ animist amulets. She went as far as setting fire on one of the villagers homestead and kidnapping and holding their girl child for so long. When you look at this extent to which Doctor Dian Fossey took her efforts of conserving these magnificent animals, you cannot help but laugh, and at the same time question whether her psychology was functioning properly. It was therefore no wonder that the Rwandese officials and the conservationists became concerned about these extreme cases of vengeance of hers. These absurd acts of Doctor Fossey also made people to start asking her suitability as the director of the research center.
Another reason as to why the efforts of Doctor Dian Fossey efforts in the conservation of the gorillas need to be criticized is her racial inclination of the process of her conservation of the mountain gorillas. Diana Fossey became somehow became so much frustrated with the failure of the local Africans and the authorities in these areas that she felt that her habituation of the gorillas was for the whites. She supported this by claiming that Africans were poachers (Fossey,
1983).Dian Fossey was so much obsessed with the elimination the poaching of the mountain gorillas that she ended up devoting more time to elimination of poaching than to scientific research and publishing. This was as a result of her witnessing the killing of her most studied gorillas by the poachers. She became increasingly (adverbial-ly) more intense in the protection of these mountain gorillas and started employing tactics which were more direct in this effort. For example, she and her group would cut animal traps almost at the moment at which they are set, capturing, and then humiliating the poachers among other tactics. She would shout “Get off my mountain.”(Fossey, 1988). The overall result here was not just hatred towards her and her entire staff but also the reduction in research and publications on the mountain gorillas and their conservation .Dian Fossey, for example, never undertook any research and published factors leading to these poaching activities and how best to eliminate them. These might have been the best remedy for this problem as opposed to the kangaroo methods she opted for which are attributed to her brutal murder.
In light of the above discussed points, it is transparent that Dian Fossey was not right to dedicate more time to fighting poaching at the expense of research and publishing on the mountain gorillas. Still she did some good work with a lot commitment. Presently; the mountain gorilla population is on the rise thanks to her efforts. Although dead, Dian Fossey’s work is still going on through the efforts of The Fossey Gorilla Fund International. However, my stand is that Dr Fossey was too extreme in her efforts and became too much concerned with anti-poaching crusade to an extent of forgetting the more beneficial research activities.
Works Cited
Fossey, Dian. "The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International." [Online] Available http://www.gorillafund.org/dian_fossey/index.php. 1999-2009.
Codak, Eric. "Women’s Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society." [Online] Available http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/dianfossey.html.
Fossey, Dian. "Minnesota State University." [Online] Available http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/fghij/fossey_dian.html.
