Updated 19 October 2026

Dian Fossey was an American researcher who studied mountain gorillas in the Virunga volcanoes from 1967 until she was murdered at her camp in December 1985. She founded the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda on 24 September 1967, showed the world that gorillas are gentle, social animals rather than monsters, and fought poaching fiercely. Her methods and her opposition to tourism were controversial, but her research, her book Gorillas in the Mist and the organisation that grew from her work transformed mountain gorilla conservation. Karisoke still operates today, run by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

From therapist to gorilla researcher

Fossey trained as an occupational therapist and first travelled to Africa in 1963, when she met the palaeoanthropologist Louis Leakey and saw mountain gorillas in Congo. In 1966 Leakey chose her for a long-term gorilla study, alongside Jane Goodall with chimpanzees and later Biruté Galdikas with orangutans. She began work in Congo’s Virunga park in 1967, but unrest forced her to leave, and she set up camp on the Rwandan side, between the volcanoes Karisimbi and Bisoke, naming it Karisoke. See our guide to Jane Goodall’s influence on gorilla research.

What her research revealed

By patiently approaching gorilla groups and imitating their behaviour, Fossey habituated them to her presence and recorded their lives in detail: family structure, the role of the silverback, how females move between groups, vocalisations, infanticide and daily routines. Her work, and that of the students who joined her, overturned the image of the gorilla as a violent beast and laid the foundation for the long-term monitoring that still continues. See our guide to gorilla social behaviour.

Digit, poaching and “active conservation”

Fossey became closely attached to a young silverback she named Digit. When he was killed by poachers at the end of 1977, she launched the Digit Fund to pay for anti-poaching patrols, which later became the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. She favoured what she called active conservation: destroying snares, patrolling and confronting poachers directly. Some of her tactics, including harsh treatment of suspected poachers, were heavily criticised, and she opposed gorilla tourism, which others, such as the Mountain Gorilla Project launched in 1979, saw as the way to fund protection and win local support.

Gorillas in the Mist and her death

Her book Gorillas in the Mist, published in 1983, brought mountain gorillas to a worldwide audience. On the night of 26 December 1985, Fossey was killed in her cabin at Karisoke; the murder has never been conclusively solved. She is buried at Karisoke beside Digit and other gorillas. The 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver, made her story famous; read about the film and its legacy.

Karisoke after Fossey

The Karisoke Research Center has continued through war and upheaval, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and has become one of the longest-running wild great ape studies in the world, now staffed largely by Rwandan researchers and trackers. Its monitoring of gorilla families, health and population over more than five decades underpins much of what is known about the species. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund also works with Grauer’s gorillas in Congo and runs education and community programmes.

Her legacy for Uganda

Fossey worked in Rwanda, not Uganda, but the conservation model that followed, combining research, protection, community support and carefully controlled tourism, now protects gorillas in Bwindi and Mgahinga too. Mountain gorillas have grown from about 250 in the Virungas in the early 1980s to at least 1,063 today. See our guides to how tourism helped save mountain gorillas and World Gorilla Day, which marks Karisoke’s founding date.

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