Renowned conservationist Bill Weber of the Wildlife Conservation Society spoke at U of T last Tuesday about the plight of Rwandan mountain gorillas and his efforts to save them.
His talk was part of a press tour promoting his book In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land, which he co-wrote with his wife Amy Vedder.
Weber and Vedder spent the better part of two decades in Verunga National Park working to save the silverback gorilla, the rarest and largest of the three species of gorilla. Silverbacks can grow as tall as two metres, yet have never been observed to attack other animals, save a colony of ants and, occasionally, overly curious researchers. They are surprisingly gentle, and accepted Weber and Vedder into their family circles during rest periods.
When asked about the nature of the gorilla mind, Weber said, “Amy would say, ‘Well, I’m a scientist, so I don’t know what is going on inside their minds,’ but I’m a social scientist, so we can play around a bit more, and I have no question at all that these are extremely intelligent animals.”
When the couple arrived in Rwanda in the mid-1970s, the silverback population had declined to only 275 individuals from about 500. Poaching had been a major factor in their decline, since foreign collectors would pay through the nose for a severed gorilla head or live infant.
But habitat loss was the main force behind the population drop. The gorillas live high on the Verunga mountain range, around which sprawls the most densely populated region of Africa, with a population density of 400 people per square kilometre. Human expansion had reduced the gorillas’ range to 60 per cent of what it once was, leaving only small pockets on the caps of the hills.
Moreover, when the infamous insecticide DDT was banned, agribusiness had to turn to more environmentally friendly pest-control solutions. As a result, forests were levelled to make room for fields of the flower pyrethrum, which is used as an insecticide.
Weber conducted population studies while Vedder assessed the ecological conditions necessary for the gorillas’ survival. The couple originally worked with Diane Fossey at her research station there. But the woman depicted in the film Gorillas in the Mist was not quite accurate, said Weber. Fossey was extremely stubborn, ill-tempered and narrow-minded. She cared little for the plight of the African people, refused to work around the needs of locals to protect the gorillas and would not allow tourists to visit the animals.
Weber and his wife parted ways with Fossey in 1978 and moved to the other edge of the park to initiate their own efforts, with the goal of harmonizing Western conservation efforts with African perspectives. Fossey stuck to her guns, and was found murdered in her cabin in December 1985.
The Mountain Gorilla Project that Weber and Vedder started has three fundamental goals: education, security, and tourism. They taught the local people about the majestic animals in their midst and encouraged the Rwandan people to preserve them. They recruited a large band of park rangers, armed with rifles, to bar poachers. And they began to bring in bands of foreign tourists, armed with cash, to help the people living in the vicinity of the park. In the first ten years after the introduction of the Mountain Gorilla Project, poachers in the Verunga Park killed only one gorilla.
Today, the gorilla population has rebounded to 360 individuals. Weber feels this is due to linking conservation to development through ecotourism. “There are still huge opportunities for conservation, and we owe it to the people of the world to do our part,” Weber said.
“Otherwise, we are leaving the heavy lifting to the world’s poorest people.”
Weber is putting his money where his mouth is: he and his wife are donating the profits from the sales of their book to further promote development in the region for the welfare of humans and apes alike.
