Karisoke Research Centre, established by Dian Fossey in a remote saddle of the Virunga volcanoes in September 1967, has been the institutional backbone of mountain gorilla science for over half a century. The research conducted there—on the behaviour, ecology, health, and genetics of mountain gorilla populations in the Virunga Massif—established the empirical foundation on which all gorilla conservation policy is built. Understanding Karisoke’s history provides context for the contemporary conservation infrastructure that Bwindi trekkers benefit from today.
Fossey’s founding vision
Dian Fossey selected the Karisoke site—at 3,000 metres between Karisimbi and Visoke volcanoes, in what is now Rwanda—for its proximity to a high density of mountain gorillas and its relative inaccessibility to poachers. She established a small camp with basic research infrastructure and began the daily work of habituating gorilla groups that would define her career. The habituation process she developed—patient, low-key approach behaviour, avoidance of direct eye contact, submission signals, and gradual exposure—became the standard methodology subsequently applied in both the Virungas and Bwindi.
Fossey’s first research priority was individual identification: developing a method for distinguishing individual gorillas from physical features—nose prints (the wrinkled skin pattern around the nostrils is unique to each individual, analogous to a human fingerprint), ear shape, facial markings, body scarring, and coat colour variation. The nose print identification system she refined has been used continuously at Karisoke for over 50 years and now allows researchers to identify over 1,000 named individuals across the Virunga population’s entire known history.
After Fossey: the institutional continuation
Fossey was murdered at Karisoke in December 1985—a crime that was never definitively solved despite multiple investigations over subsequent decades. Her death attracted enormous international attention, which was amplified by the 1988 film “Gorillas in the Mist” starring Sigourney Weaver, and it galvanised conservation funding and political support for gorilla protection in ways that her life’s work, though extraordinary, had not achieved alone. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), established before her death, continued the Karisoke programme with expanded staff and improved facilities, maintaining the daily monitoring of habituated gorilla groups without interruption.
The Rwandan genocide of 1994 forced temporary evacuation of Karisoke staff and interrupted the research programme. Remarkably, the gorilla monitoring resumed almost immediately after the genocide ended, with staff returning to assess gorilla health and reestablish contact with habituated groups. The continuity of the data series—maintained through civil war and genocide—is a testament to the institutional commitment of the researchers and rangers who prioritised gorilla monitoring even in the most extreme human circumstances.
Karisoke’s contemporary research programme
The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, opened in Rwanda in 2022, represents the most significant investment in gorilla research infrastructure in the institution’s history. The new campus—built on 14 acres near Musanze—provides laboratory facilities, educational space, a gorilla conservation centre, and residential accommodation for researchers and students from across Africa and the world. The research programme continues to focus on gorilla behavioural ecology, health monitoring, genetic analysis, and community conservation, with an expanded emphasis on training African conservation scientists who will lead the field in coming decades.
For gorilla trekkers visiting Bwindi, the Karisoke connection is indirect but foundational: the behavioural knowledge that rangers use to interpret gorilla group dynamics, the habituation techniques that make close encounters possible, and the health monitoring protocols that protect habituated gorillas from human-transmitted disease all derive from the research tradition that Fossey established in the Virungas and that Karisoke has maintained and developed across five decades.
