A Good Book Makes You Think

I just finished reading In the Kingdom of Gorillas: The Quest to Save Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas by Amy Vedder and Bill Weber. We were in Volcano’s National Park in Rwanda four weeks ago, walking among the mountain gorillas (Kwitonda Group). It is a humbling and breathtaking experience. It made us wonder what it took for these great apes to be protected. We knew some of the story behind the biological study of the gorillas as told by George Schaller and Dian Fossey, but much of the work in establishing and maintaining the Mountain Gorilla Project that led to the opportunity for us to visit mountain gorillas in their habitat has happened in more recent times.

The story of the mountain gorillas’ survival and growth as a population seems unlikely at best. It appeared they were doomed in the 1970s. They reside on high elevation volcanoes in bamboo and evergreen forests

Hiking through potato and pyrethrum fields to visit gorillas of the Kwitonda Group.

on land that could instead support cattle or grow potatoes. Through the years the edges of the park have been encroached upon and threatened by schemes to make them more “productive” in an effort to feed the growing population of Rwanda. The competition for land, soil and acreage is intense. Rwanda is the size of Vermont but has eleven million people.

Amy Vedder and Bill Weber worked on the ground in Rwanda for World Conservation Society and USAID during this pivotal period from the late 70s to the late 90s, studying wildlife and analyzing agricultural and socioeconomic patterns around Rwanda’s forest reserves and national parks. Their work began when Dian Fossey was alive and bringing awareness of the gorilla’s plight to the world, while she struggled with

One of three silverback males is the leader of the family group.

her own personal challenges. They share the story of her last years at the Karisoke Research Center and of the many other people who were advocates for gorillas in the face of demands for the park’s acreage. Many Rwandans wondered how land could be set aside for gorillas when there were people starving for lack of land to grow food. It’s a reasonable question with a complicated answer.

When you spend an hour hiking up through Irish potato and pyrethrum fields to the stone fenceline that marks the park boundary, you find it incredible that you will soon see gorillas. It is an intensely agricultural area. When you actually find them due to the trackers who continually follow their movements, you have the privilege of an hour of standing among a gorilla family who tolerates your presence and is perhaps as curious about you as you are about them. It

Females carry their young as they forage for leaves and bamboo shoots.

feels magical, even when you know they have been habituated over a long period of time to tolerate our presence.

This opportunity could never have happened without the great dedication of biologists, trackers, guides, guards, fundraisers and conservation administrators. Gorillas were being killed by poachers to sell the heads and hands as trophies while capturing youngsters for zoos and private animal collectors. Wire snares were set by local people to capture duiker and other animals they wanted as meat on their tables. Vedder and Weber knew that local people are key participants in the story of gorilla conservation. Many poachers have since become trackers and guides, finding a good living in protecting gorillas. They have incredible

Trackers and guides are skilled at helping tourists have a safe experience that respects the gorillas rights as well.

knowledge of the Virunga Volcanoes and wildlife there, which has been invaluable. Also, they know the tactics and reasons behind poaching and could help biologists understand the challenges.

Some who read this book may be disappointed that it is not about gorilla behavior page after page. But as the authors make clear, the purpose of their work was not only to study gorillas, but to save them as a species. They may have done just that through their good work in establishing the Mountain Gorilla Project. The gorilla population in the Virunga Volcanoes has grown from a low of 260 to more than 770 animals through four decades of dedicated effort by a legion of people. Much of the work took place in administrative and political meetings. The

economic value to the nation and local communities was a key point in developing gorilla tourism. The

Local community dancers perform before gorilla tracking groups go out and collect substantial donations from tourists, an expected local benefit from ecotourism.

seemingly high fees paid for a day’s visit with the gorillas, now $750 a day, support the very large number of people that manage gorilla tourism and continued research, helps fund local community projects, and protects other forest reserves in Rwanda.

This book drives deep into your soul and your beliefs and makes you think. How do we protect the innocent communities of creatures like mountain gorillas in the face of progress, war, development and agricultural demands? So far the good people who have protected the gorillas have created a miracle through patience, diplomacy, research and hard work. We will hope they continue to succeed. Mountain gorillas have as much right to the planet as we do. Because the forest plays such an important role in earth’s complex ecosystem, their future and ours is intertwined. Gorilla tourism does more than just pay the

You can take all the non-flash photos you wish and, of course, unforgettable memories will stay with you.

bills. It puts people from all over the world with gorillas daily to witness the amazing difference that conservation programs can make and become advocates. It makes you think about the rights of other animals to a home and space to live.

The authors give an unvarnished view of the personalities and complications of the many people involved in this protracted story of decades. If gorillas fascinate you, read the book. If you want an unparalleled wildlife experience, visit Rwanda and meet them in the rainforest. Your tourism funds will help protect the gorillas and our planet. Your memories will last a lifetime.

– Tim Merriman

Memories from the Road

Lisa and a baby panda exchange high fives in Wolong Panda Reserve.

My wife and I travel extensively as consultants and trainers. We are in Japan as I write this and just left Korea after giving presentations at two forest symposiums. As we travel internationally, I faithfully keep a daily diary, a journal, of every place we go, every person we meet and all that we do. I also take an extraordinary number of photographs, but the journal has become the most essential tool for backing up my memory.

At home it never occurs to me to write down what happens, though I think that would be useful to any writer. Daily demands of our regular routine make it seem challenging to keep a journal at home, but empty hours on a plane, train, bus or waiting for the next event to begin are perfect for sitting down with my laptop to catch up on my travel journal.

Getting close to a silverback gorilla in the Virunga Volcanoes was amazing.

When you write books, blog articles and technical papers, you realize just how fallible your memory can be. Try recalling an incredible experience you had ten years ago and want to use in a novel or article. Your memory of the details may be so vague that those details become blurred. You may recall events based partly on what you did but also be influenced by stories from others and TV accounts of the place you have seen. We integrate new information with what we already know and our personal memory is often a mix of personal experiences and learned information.

Reading old journal articles and looking through photos from a specific journey bring it alive again. Sometimes I reread the journals to find people’s names so I can contact them again or just use the correct name when I see them. In technical articles I may need to quote the dates and happenings to be accurate.

Three weeks ago we were in Rwanda, tracking chimpanzees in Nyungwe National Park and mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park. As amazing as those experiences were, some of the details have already faded. Ten years ago we first worked with giant pandas in Wolong Valley in Sichuan Province of China. I have great detailed notes in my journal from the trip and that’s a good thing because time has dulled some of the memories of specific events there. Neuroscience research tells us that experiences are necessary to create context for memories to reside in our brains but it also tells us that every time we remember something, we run the risk of changing that memory just a bit. It’s kind of like taking a book out of the library – every time it changes hands, it gets a little more tired-looking as different pages get dog-eared and bindings start to fail. You can put it back in the library, but it’s been changed, just a bit.

I’ll never forget July 7, 1968, when I ran in the “incierro” in front of the bulls in Pamplona.

In 1968, I ran in front of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. It was my first journey abroad and I kept no record of any kind. I would love to look back at a journal and refresh my memory but it does not exist. My photos from that era are Kodachrome slides stored in a box in the garage so they don’t work well as reminders. I have one scanned photo from that experience that makes me wonder what was going through my mind that interesting day. I know I ate churros and drank a liter of milk before running and that the bulls were big and scary. It would be great to read a more detailed account in my own words.

This week in Japan we attended the Fall Festival in Fujinomiya, a city at the foot of Mount Fuji. This festival has been around more than 100 years and takes place in front of the Sengen Shrine, a Shinto shrine to Mount Fuji. The twenty local communities in the city have built beautiful wood carved dashis, floats, that hold drummers, flute players and cymbal clangers to do “battles of the bands” with neighboring communities in the streets from 4 to 9 PM each evening on November 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th each year. In between the sparring the competitive teams gather in the street to drink copious amounts of sake and share in “bon” dancing. These beautiful dances involve elaborate hand and foot motions that unite the dancers in spirit and movement.

This elder on a dashi team invited me to join the “bon” dancing and I took part.

I really enjoyed updating my journal about the festival. Facebook has become an easy way to share photos with my family and friends. The journal goes into digital storage and some day when I need to recall exactly what happened on this trip, it will be there waiting. Ten years of journals from 22 nations have great value as a writing tool. Perhaps my family will also find some value in them as a reminder of me someday.

– Tim Merriman

What a Difference a Book Makes

Human beings must decide now whether or not the mountain gorilla will become one of them, a species discovered and extinct within the same century, The gorillas’ destiny lies in the hands of those who share their communal inheritance, the land of Africa, the home of the mountain gorilla. –Dian Fossey

Dian Fossey’s landmark work with mountain gorillas in Rwanda from 1966 until her death in 1985 has often been credited with saving the species. She wrote of her experiences in “Gorillas in the Mist,” which was later made into a movie. Her stories of these gentle giants gave us a glimpse into the world of one of humankind’s closest relatives, making the decimation of their numbers by poachers all the more wrenching. Fossey was not the only researcher to write about the gorillas – George Schaller’s pioneering studies with them and Bill Webber and Amy Vedder’s work to create an ecotourism program with the intent of saving the species have also been important works. But Fossey’s intensely personal relationship with the mountain gorillas transcended pure science and conservation measures. Her passion stirred millions, giving credence to the neuroscience that tells us that engaging both the mind and the heart is what makes a real difference in persuasive communication.

When I learned some years ago that it was possible to spend time with mountain gorillas in their own habitat, I was ready. I had seen the movie, read the book, and wanted to see what Fossey saw. As the years slipped by, and age crept up on my joints, I had given up hope of ever making the journey up the mountains where the gorillas lived. I had heard it was a physically demanding hike through rough, heavily forested terrain and I was sure that I had missed my window of opportunity.

So when I found myself in Rwanda for a work project recently, and a free day gave us the chance to visit Volcanoes National Park, I paid an outrageous amount for a permit that would allow me to join a guided group of eight people as we caught up to trackers and spent an hour with a mountain gorilla family going about their normal daily routine in the forest. There are now ten habituated family groups that roam the Virunga volcanoes. Each family can be visited by only one group of eight humans each day, and only for an hour. The time I was able to spend with the gorillas was nothing short of magical. It was definitely physically demanding, but we managed to be in a group that visited a family that was close to the park boundary and I was able to keep up with the younger, more fit people in the group, as our guide moved slowly uphill with plenty of rest breaks.

Dian Fossey was opposed to the idea of creating opportunities for tourists to view gorillas. Part of her fear stemmed from the concern that gorillas might not be able to differentiate between harmless tourists and deadly poachers and so would be more vulnerable to poaching. The opposite has occurred. There is now a huge financial incentive for the Rwandan government to protect the mountain gorillas. Trackers stay with the gorillas, so that time spent finding them is minimized. Because there is greater attention paid to them, poaching is becoming more difficult, and their numbers have actually increased in recent years. Last year’s census by the World Wildlife Fund recorded 786 individuals, up 26% in the last decade.

Fossey’s book and the movie it inspired brought attention to the mountain gorilla in a way that little else could. I am grateful for the work that she did, especially after meeting the gorillas face to face on their turf. They are incredible creatures, with old souls reflected in their depths of their eyes. I want to know more about them, see more of them, and do more for them. Fossey piqued my interest, but being there solidified my commitment. What a difference a book can make, opening a door to new worlds and new ways of thinking about things you thought you already knew. Keep reading, but remember, the last page is just the start . . .

– Lisa Brochu

Author with Tim Merriman of The Leopard Tree