Dian Fossey Birthday Celebrated with Google Doodle

Dr. Dian Fossey, would have reached her 82nd  birthday on Jan, 16, 2014. Though she was killed trying to save her beloved mountain gorillas on Dec. 26, 1985, it is heartening to remember how much she was able to accomplish and how her work has endured.
 
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, which was founded originally by Dian Fossey (and then called the ” Digit Fund”) today continues Fossey’s commitment to daily gorilla protection and has expanded her mission to include studying other species that share the gorillas’ ecosystem and to working with communities that neighbor gorilla habitats.
 
 “Among all researchers who have worked in the African field, I consider myself one of the most fortunate because of the privilege of having been able to study the mountain gorilla,” wrote Fossey in the preface to her book, “Gorillas in the Mist.” “I deeply hope that I have done justice to the memories and observations accumulated over my years of research on what I consider to be the greatest of the great apes.”

Dian Fossey first set up camp on the Congo side of the Virungas and began to study the gorillas there, until a civil war forced her to leave. Refusing to give up her dream, she started over on the Rwanda side, founding the Karisoke Research Center in 1967 and later the Digit Fund (which is now the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.) In the 1970s, she spent four years traveling between Africa and Cambridge University to earn her Ph.D., and toward the end of her life finished what would become a best-selling book (and then a movie), “Gorillas in the Mist.”

Today, there is no question that Dian Fossey’s work has made all the difference toward the continuing survival of the mountain gorilla. Fossey worried that mountain gorillas might not live to see the end of the last century. Thanks to the work she started, and which has been carried on through the intensive conservation methods of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund today, the gorillas have survived and even increased in number. If Fossey were still alive on her birthday today, that would certainly be the best present possible.
More information at www.gorillafund.org
 
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund is delighted to note the Google doodle created to celebrate her birthday.

Contact Information

Erika Archibald

Communications Director

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

Contact via E-mail