Biography

In 1985, Dian Fossey – the American primatologist who was well-known for her conservation work

with mountain gorillas – was brutally murdered.

In the lead up to the 20th anniversary of that event, Camilla de la Bedoyere was approached by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to work with National Geographic and produce an biography of Dian Fossey. The Fund had access to Dian’s correspondence from her days at Karisoke, in Rwanda, and this proved an invaluable and precious resource for recreating the story of Dian’s remarkable achievements. Photographs by Bob Campbell, who worked with Dian, and a foreword by Jane Goodall, helped in the process of writing this book as a ‘nimble and moving biography’.

The book’s title, No One Loved Gorillas More, is the inscription on Dian’s grave at Karisoke.

It’s been more than 20 years since the publication of Gorillas in the Mist, Dian Fossey’s indelible account of her adventures among the mountain gorillas of the Virguna volcanoes of Rwanda–and since her unsolved murder–and her story remains as compelling as ever. One of Louis Leakey’s “Trimates,” along with orangutan expert Birute Galdikas and chimpanzee specialist Jane Goodall, who authored this riveting volume’s foreword, Fossey not only pioneered the scientific study of a magnificent animal, she also imperiled herself by confronting the poachers invading the great apes’ nature reserve. A fresh perspective on Fossey’s complex personality, profound devotion to mountain gorillas, and world-changing achievements is forged in a dynamic combination of Bob Campbell’s stunning and intimate photographs, journalist and nature writer de la Bedoyere’s nimble and moving biography, and Fossey’s own colorful and, by turns, frank and dissembling letters to family and friends, vigorous correspondence never before published. This poignant assemblage reveals both the intense joy and immense suffering Fossey experienced during her 18-year sojourn among Rwanda’s mountain gorillas, whose descendents, in spite of all the horrors that have transpired, live on in their misty, and vigilantly protected, rain forests.

Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

You can find out more about the conservation work that continues in Dian’s name at The Gorilla Fund.

If you want to provide some practical support and like a challenge, you could take part in the The Great Gorilla Run, which members of the British Olympic Rowing Team declared to be one of the most difficult things they had ever done!