The politicians of the Northern Ruhengeri Gisenyi axis

Conservation was high priority under Belgian-Rwanda gorillas.

Under Belgian control, conservation came first in Rwanda. Prince Albert, Leopold’s son, had seen Yellowstone and developed support for national parks. Under the encouragement of Carl Akeley and with father assistance, the Virunga national park was established in 1925 specifically to protect its mountain gorillas.

Expanded into nearby Congo in 1929, the Albert Park would finally occupy more than four thousand square kilometers. Designed to safeguard the varied species assemblages of a savanna wetlands complex spanning one thousand square kilometers of Eastern Rwanda, the Akagera Park was established later in 1934 Though the Belgians fiercely exploited the most lucrative hard woods, the vast forest reserves along the Congo-Nile split also attracted fresh interest.

The Belgians implemented various policies and practices throughout Rwanda’s inhabited terrain that would eventually increase human pressure on protected areas, particularly in the highlands, therefore intensifying their impact. Promoted to boost local income and overseas exports were cash crops. From the original 1,300 acres, tea was grown on additional 20,000 acres in the highlands and pyrethrum was added in the 1940s to provide pesticides for the war effort.

Under penalty of fines, Rwandan farmers were compelled to grow commercial crops for which they got little pay. Still, they hooked onto white potatoes as a subsistence crop. Almost all of it in Northern Rwanda’s higher elevation zones, potato output skyrocketed from three thousand acres in 1930 to 85,00 acres in 1942.

But the next year a fungus known as the “black blight” destroyed the whole crop. Like in Ireland a century earlier, a sizable population depending on the potato went hungry. Still, there was no structure in place to assist the colony split from Belgium during World War 11. Under Belgian Tutsi control, N Northern Hutu was not a preferred constituency even if support were available. During the 1943–44 potato famine, almost 100,000 northerners perished.

The Belgian government sent new blight resistant potato varieties after the war, and highland farmers slowly, albeit cautiously, resumed output. Unlike most other African colonies, Rwanda’s per capita food output was constant during the postwar era. This was more of a result of clearing additional territory—especially wetlands—than of increased output. Particularly in wetlands, forest areas rather than increased output.

Not only were forest areas removed. The Belgians made the remarkable decision in 1958 to turn over more than twenty thousand acres of Virunga parkland for use as farming. This was among the first in positions of removing protected territory from a recognized national park context, therefore creating a hazardous precedent inside Rwanda and internationally.

Human population pressure was the direct cause of the Virunga parkland change. Under the Belgians, the average health of a Rwandan became much better. Modern drugs delivered via a small network of hospitals and clinics raised life expectancies while infant mortality dropped.

Improved health programs combined with more food production produced shockingly rapid human population expansion. Hutu made up 85% of the more than three million Rwandan population that increased from one million at the start of the past century by the end of the Belgian rule in 1962.

The Belgians kept up their indirect authority via the Tutsi throughout their stay in Rwanda. Though the county has many thousand officials, technicians, and private individuals, the Belgians participated significantly more directly in daily colony administration than the Germans before them. Still, they kept the Tutsi monarchy’s front.

They clearly preferred the Tutsi above others in trade and education in reward for this performance. But eventually the Belgians also gave Hutu complaints a forum. Starting in the 1950s, Hutu leaders from Southern and central Rwanda started distributing pamphlets denouncing the preferential treatment of Tutsi with respect to employment and educational possibilities.

Outside of Rwanda, mean while, ant colonial feeling was growing on the twin foundations of Gandhi’s non violent triumph against the British in India and the military success of the Vietnamese over the French. As the decade unfolded, calls for improved Hutu treatment increasingly blended with manifestos advocating for independence.

For some Belgians, the logic of the former and the certainty of the latter spoke to them. Eventually, socialists and Catholics created an unexpected coalition in support of handing the Hutu majority independence, which they saw to be a far-off and hence controllable reality, power.

JEAN PAUL HARROY talked with remarkable clarity. In his nineties, a small round guy, he told his single part in Rwandan history while continuously jabbing his stubby fingers into the air. First warden of the Albert Park Virunga area. Author of Rwanda terre qui pleurt (Rwanda: The land the weeps) offers a moving if somewhat theatrical narrative of the nation’s ongoing struggle with resource depletion.

Last governor general of Rwanda Urundi; after independence he would be appointed secretary general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 1980, although he would meet with bills at his residence at the free university of Brussels, where he was professor emeritus.

Harroy was instructed to encourage a revolt to let the Hutu overthrow the Tutsi during his term as governor general. This was to happen exclusively in Rwanda, despite a similar Hutu majority in neighboring Burundi in his own account. Harroy subtly shared this knowledge with important Hutu leaders, primarily from Southern Rwanda, who subsequently looked immobilized by the possibility.

They were evidently unprepared for forceful action after decades of Tutsi domination, even if they had developed skill in formulating political manifestos. The Northern Hutu had no such difficulties. Knowing the Belgians would not help their Tutsi clientele, they sharpened their machetes and spears, left their mountain villages in Ruhengeri and Gisenyi and started slaughtering.

During the short but brutal revolution of 1959, tens of thousands of Tutsi perished.As the Hutu cemented their hold over Rwanda, hundreds of thousands fled into nearby Burundi, Uganda, and Congo. Hutu troops, now Belgian-armed and under the guidance of a young major called Juvenal Habyarimana, mercilessly destroyed a tutsi counter offensive a few years later.

Jean Paul Harroy grinned as he recalled Hayarimana as a modest but moral young man who abandoned seminary education for greater military possibilities. He would use these chances to participate actively in the struggle for independence and finally rose to be Rwanda’s president.

Geography helped certain group resist

MOUNTAIN GORILLAS are not yet vocal.

Mountains Gorillas are not yet vocal. Their flatulent by result of their vegetarian diet is their most often heard sound. Supported by maybe fifteen different vocalization, actions and body language are very important in gorilla communication. Most of these vocalizations seem to have well defined purposes and are quite short.

Gorillas and human observers make subtle rumbling sounds—belch vocalizations unlike their name—to signal one other’s presence. Deep from the chest, staccato barks from coughing grunts heated with annoyance. A wraagh is a protracted loud vocalization more akin to a roar from extreme rage. Singing, on the other hand, is rather different.

Group 5 would sing every several months more often during dry conditions. Usually at a place when the whole family was eating enough of premium food, one person would make a deep rumbling sound breathing heavily in and out in a modulated tone. Usually, this would remain a solo performance lasting little more than a minute.

Others would join in bringing gender and age specific basses baritones, tenors and sopranos to the mix. For a gorilla Gregorian chant at the Virunga cathedral, the outcome was a chorus of entwined melodies rising and falling in a natural cadence that may last several minutes. These outstanding performances surely had some other purpose, but we decided to appreciate them as unbridled displays of group harmony and personal enjoyment.

In Rwanda, privacy is not a concept. Everywhere we left the park, mothers were working their fields or kids were caring for animals. Any way one traveled passed a consistent flow of people. Should we find solace behind some bushes, the gaze of inquisitive young people would show themselves on the other side.

Not concentrated in the cities, people were dispersed all across the nation. Together in 1978, Kigali Ruhengeri, Gisenyi, Butare, and Cyangugu had fewer than 600,000 inhabitants.The remaining 4.6 million Rwandans lived in a distinctly scattered settlement pattern with solitary homes strewn throughout the terrain.

These people’s life practically revolved around what they could cultivate or graze on ever smaller and more scattered areas. Land hunger was strong in an impoverished nation the size of Vermont, and the natural areas there were under danger.

The Hutu ancestors of today arrived in the highlands around the big lakes of East central Africa at least two thousand years ago. There they discovered a pleasant temperature and a patchwork of natural wet hills and rocky mountains.

These Bantu farmers most likely originally settled in what is now Eastern Rwanda along the forest edge as they did during their lengthy trek from the opposite side of the Congo Basin. They started to remove the damp montane forest to reveal its rich soils using both fire and the Iron Age equipment they imported from West Africa.

Maybe just as vital as their iron axes and hoes, the immigrants brought the very nutritious perennial food source—the cultivated banana. The natural woodland gave way to a covering of banana stands interrupted by vast fields of finger millet and peas.

Only in Rwanda was the proto-Hutu alone. Though their low population density and hunter gatherer methods had minimal effect on the terrain, the pygmies preceded them by millennia. They also favored living at the border of a transition zone between two important habitat types abundant in the plants and animals sustaining their way of life.

This was the forest savanna. The Twa probably engaged in bartering with their new neighbors, trading bush meat for food or iron goods, after Bantu farmers arrived. But the Twa were driven higher and higher into the highlands, where they had to adjust to a harsher environment and bountiful food as the forest edge gave way to the banana.

A second major migratory surge poured out of the highlands of North Eastern Africa seven or eight hundred years after the Bantu push eastward throughout central Africa. The migrants now were pastoralists rather than farmers. Among others, they built the unique cow based civilizations of the Fulani, Samburu, Masai, Zulu, and Tutsi as they traveled west and South.

Some of these groups traveled only to the Interlake highlands, where contemporary pollen studies reveal signs of cattle grazing among mountain lakes and marshes by AD 100.Outside of the highest mountains, however, these original Tutsi discovered much of the contemporary Rwanda populated by the Hutu, already arranged into separate kingdoms.

Moving into open natural niches, the Tusti and their livestock avoided running afoul of the Hutu. Tutsi herders were attracted to hilltops and valleys while Hutu farmers had developed sophisticated methods of exploiting the lower, middle, and higher slopes of the hillsides that dominated the Rwandan scene. While other African pastoral tribes had to hunt hundreds of kilometers for seasonal pasture, Rwanda provided much shorter altitudinal migration.

Cattle may graze on grassy hilltops during the lengthy rainy season, then go a few hundred yards down into surrounding valleys to browse in rich wetlands during the dry season. Neither did the Tutsi compete with the established Hutu for excellent land, an ecological separation promoting political cooperation.

The Tutsi established permanently in the area throughout many centuries. Their tall, skinny bodies set them apart from the stocky Hutu and much shorter Twa. Still, the Tutsi made the extraordinary linguistic move of substituting the Bantu language Kinyarwanda for their ancient Nilotic tongue of choice. For Hutu agriculture goods, the Tutsi traded milk and other animal products.

Cattle were allowed to graze on agricultural wastes, leaving dung to nourish the ground in turn. Eventually, these systems rely on and interact in more formal terms between customers and suppliers. Though arrangements were flexible and many Hutu were patrons too, Tutsi were evidently better able to translate their cattle riches into organize clientage connections in their benefit.

By the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the minority Tutsi had negotiated, battled, or manipulated their way into authority over much of Rwanda. Once again, ecology was important as the Tusi could stay in one location and concentrate their power rather than following lengthy and erratic seasonal movement as other pastoral cultures would have done.

A very structured and hierarchical monarchy developed under a series of Tutsi rulers or Mwamis. Aggressively expanding to seize much of current Rwanda, this monarchy combined the manpower and agricultural resources of the Tutsi and Hutu It also formed a sequence of changing alliances with surrounding governments in what are now the countries of Uganda, Congo, Burundi, and Tanzania.

Gorilla males have disproportionately small genitalia-Gorilla safaris.

David had a strong physique long black hair parted down the middle and circular wire rimmed spectacles. He was around five feet ten. He kept watching Group 4, but he used Amy’s absence that day to make some comparison notes on Group 5.

He attempted to keep his normal dry attitude once inside our cabin, but a grin soon covered his whole face.Puck was pregnant. No answer; “I didn’t see it happen, but I think she must have had it while I was there since she was still licking off birth fluid”.

She is baby. At last, the words came to us and we sat there shocked. News that was greasy and unreal. Saying, however, that Amy felt any disappointment would be dishonest. She stuck with the group day after day, month after month, seldom missing a day in the field. She initially missed Liza’s transfer and now a birth! Given that gorilla females only conceive every four years, it is an uncommon occurrence.

Though Kelly Stewart thought that one happened when she was with Group 4, none had ever seen a birth in the wild.Is the mother off by herself? Or do other people assist? Is she lying down or squatted? She does what with the umbilical cord? Does she make any vocalizations? Seeing a fresh gorilla join the planet would be rather spectacular. The ideas flowed quickly one after another until the most basic inquiry dominated: how did puck have a baby?

For their stature, gorilla males have unusually tiny penises. Simultaneously, mountain gorillas have great long body hair covering everything save areas of their hands, feet, chest, and faces. Therefore, while the penis and scrotum are clearly visible on very young gorillas, they essentially vanish from view at the age of two. Puck’s absence of a penis had escaped observation by Dian in “his” early years; her actual gender has since gone unseen by Sandy and others. We questioned if there were any more such circumstances.

Using their accepotance by the gorillas, Amy and David investigated who had what below the belly over the following few weeks. Only three additional older sub- Adults needed to be examined since Puck was now out of the closet. When he arrived to check Amy’s red bandanna the next week, rest times presented the ideal chance.

Amy carefully separated the hairs between Tuck’s leg as the five year old sat to study the bandanna. There was a little black protuberance that was obviously visible, but it did not fit the anticipated scale or form. She looked more closely and found Tuck to have a quite large clitoris.

While Tuck seemed unconcerned by the inspection, Amy returned to the cabin in shock. Sisters Puck and Tuck were from different countries. A few weeks later, David would say that Group 4’s four-year-old Augustus ought going forward to be Augusta.

Of the two primary research groups, three of the four older sub-adults had been sexed wrongly. Amy quickly let Sandy Harcourt and Kelly Stewart at Cambridge know that they may like to go over any gender studies in their almost finished doctorates.

Amy’s own work would also need some change as Puck’s eating habits would now be seen as those of a pregnant female, not a developing young man. Not taken from their biological families, Puck would also be included to the list of girls kept to reproduce with either her father, Beethoven, or half-brother, Icarus. From a conservation standpoint, the good news was that the Virunga gorilla population now included three additional females who would most certainly produce ten to fifteen surviving off springs for the next generations.

In the days after the big Virunga Sex Change, it was fascinating to contemplate how assumed gender roles could have shaped our own interpretation of individual behavior. Both Puck and Tuck were confident, extremely active gorillas. Unlike the other young men in their group, they both enjoyed playing and looked to have equal, if not better, status.

Actually, we had debated whether Puck or Ziz, should Icarus stay on the perimeter or go off as solitary male, was more likely to become the dominant silverback in group five. Among all the gorillas, Tuck was the most inquisitive; he would constantly approach to check fresh patches on our boots or garments, study freckles, or yank on bootlaces.

Puck once raised Bills binoculars to see the wider end. Bill wondered what she thought of the “little” fingers she saw through the smaller lenses as she stroked her palm gently back and forth under the binoculars. Exceptional as much of this behavior may be for gorillas, it looked to us to be stereotypically “male” extroverted forceful, exploratory. We could now let our expectations go and observe that it was also typical female gorilla behavior.

One had to go no farther than their mother for another explanation of Pucks and Tucks status in Group 5. The most ranked female in the clan was Effie. In disputes over food, Effie’s stance, cough grunts, and seeming determination to fight if needed nearly always carried the day. Among the first to explore the clay cave, she had at least three off springs in the group; four, if Icarus, the baby silverback, were hers too. Even Beethoven sometimes bowed to Effie when she chose to travel another path or search a better nesting spot.

We were all taken off guard one day when a strong storm tore down from the saddle. The women fled for a nearby collapsed Hagenia at the first crack of thunder. Effie showed first; then came Pantsy, Amy, and Tuck. A few seconds later, Bill arrived and found barely enough room to curl up close to Tuck, leaving his lower body in the wet rain.

Beethoven initially sat stoically in the Gorillas characteristic wet weather pose arms folded, head tilted down, water flowing down his long hairs. Usually, this “wet Buddha” posture was a good one for at least one hour. But five minutes of really strong down power, Beethoven got up and walked over to where the five of us had gathered inside our rudimentary Hagenia refuge. Not looking at Effie, he stood in full swagger, chin out, pursing his lips. It was at least for us, an anxious time. Effie finally broke up the stalemate with a series of harsh cough noises.

vegetation sampling is the random numbers table-gorilla tracking.

The random numbers table is the foundation and curse of vegetation sampling. This innovative idea guarantees that the researcher dose not somehow add biassed factors into the study inside the mathematically determined main sample region. So we methodically lay down five straight transect lines with string every thirty meters within each quad.

We owned far we traveled down that string and how far we turned either left or right to locate our nested 100-10, 1-square meter sample plots, but we were limited by the random numbers table. And it was dictator as well. We had returned from a dangerous plunge into a ravine no sooner than the following magic number would call for us to descend over the same precipice.

This odd series also seems to ensure repeat passes over particularly bad areas of elephant’s nettle development. At moments like this, only Amy’s great dedication to quality research over whelmed Bills overwhelming want to sample some else more welcoming.

Midway in June, we finished vegetation sampling. We had many days in a run of strong afternoon storms; the severe rainy season was closing with a fury. We resolved on our final day to start early and, if at all possible, finish by midday. We were on time when an unusual flash of lightning announced the beginning of an hour-long hail assault.

As they tore much of the surrounding flora, the marble-sized ice balls hurt our exposed hands and heads. We were dazely standing in icy water by the time we completed our final tests, but we were still conscious enough to know we were both in early hypothermia stages. Given our bad mental state and great physical condition, our answer to the dilemma—pack our bags and run back up the mountains—made logical.

Our half hour descent became a ten-minute uphill return run that warmed our legs and left us almost mad with laughter as we pulled up about fifty yards below our cabin. We kept going till a weird, deep tearing sound stopped us. We held hands. The sound became a ror as a massive Hagenia tore its roots from the ground and rushed for our moss that smashed through our roof, almost halfing our house.

Five minutes earlier, we would have been pulling off our wet clothing precisely where the colossus rested at the side of our bed. Rather, we worked all day chopping down the tree, rebuilding a few important wooden frame parts, and putting fresh corrugate tin panels in place. Among the few benefits of living in a tin hut is its simplicity of maintenance.

One startling revelation regarding the virunga habitat came from OUR sampling. We searched over 1,500 plots for not one Hagenia seedling. From the park border at 8,800 feet up to the treeline at 10,700 feet, mature Hagenia were quite common.

But the biggest living form and one of just two main species in the whole park, there was scant indication of any re-generation of this virunga behemoth. Although they ate little of the tree, gorillas scaled its sloping trunk to consume its profusion of lichens and ferns. Of course, birds, squirrels, hyrax, and many other species found food and cover from the tree.

Though typically from the fallen trunks of dead trees, we did find some indications of regeneration outside of our sample locations. We also know of one little sapling patch in a damaged region close to the park border. Though it was not conclusive, our discovery begged major concerns regarding karisoke’s ongoing usage of Hagenia as its main source of firewood-a habit that stopped a few years later when Sandy Harcourt took over as director of the station.

According to AMY’s SEVENTEEN MONTHS of study, the Virunga gorillas chose rather selectively from among more than one hundred different food varieties. Whenever feasible, they deliberately sought variation in their diet and favored more nutrient-dense, better quality meals. During one-third of the year, their diet consisted mostly of bamboo shoots.

Apart from bamboo, most of their meals were somewhat widely distributed and plentiful. Although group 5 seldom visited several sites with great food values, they seemed to be really important.Apparently, they didn’t have to pay them visits. The gorillas lived in a large salad bowl with plenty of varied, healthy meals still on available.

This ending defied both common wisdom and our expectations. A rising number of authors and environmentalists were already sending the mountain gorillas to the trashbin of evolutionary history, or to a limited life of cage breeding, citing their low numbers and lack of habitat. Fossey herself freely discussed their approaching extinction.

Ian Redmond had informed us that he thought our job “was to record all that we could about the gorillas lives and behavior before they disappeared.” Though Ian and Dian were as dedicated to the gorillas as anybody could possibly be, we felt that our main focus should be on saving the mountain gorilla rather than recording its extinction.

Our studies showed that the gorillas have numbers and may be growing. Later demographic studies would demonstrate that the population even had the reproductive capacity to rebound to Schaller’s level of four hundred to five hundred gorillas. We were resolved to use this fresh data to support a good argument for wild mountain gorilla protection.

Still, several issues dogged the salad bowl utopia. Poaching kept us thinking throughout our time at Karisoke. Constant sneezing and sniffling of gorillas who no longer had a lower elevation sanctuary from times of heavy rain and cold interspersed the lengthy rainy season of 1979. And on their woodland coast, the swelling tide of people lapped progressively higher. The gorillas would be overrun without a strong political support dike.

Pucked and tucked away were brothers. But it was before Puck became pregnant. Group 4 dominated all of the research from the moment Dian Fossey started working in Karisoke in 1969. Other surrounding groups were under observation for abnormal movement, membership, and interactions. Only in the middle of the 1970s, however, did any thorough investigation on GROUP 5 start under Sandy Harcourt’s direction using data from both Groups 4 and 5 for his behavioral study at Karisoke.

Group 5 was once again allowed to be periodically watched till our arrival in 1978 when Sandy departed Karisoke to finish his PhD at Cambridge University.Dian provided us a family composition list for group five at that time, but some questions over some of the twelve named people arose.

Amy soon found that the family consisted in fact in fourteen, two silver back males, Beethoven and icarus, four adult females-Effie, Marchessa, Pantsy and Liza; two black back (eight-to ten-year-old) males –ziz and Puck; three younger males –Tuck, Pablo and Shinda; three younger female – quince, poppy and Muraha.

Except for Quince’s death and Liza’s relocation, this system was somewhat steady during our stay at Karisoke until November 14, 1978, when things altered drastically. Amy was sitting at our desk catching up on transcribing her field notes when David Watts knocked and entered. She had taken two days.

Karisoke guides and researchers.

Twice she was able to climb a Hagenia tree and observe as the buffalo remained for an apparently endless period straight ahead before eventually slinking away. Others have not been so lucky; furious buffalo have caused injuries to Karisoke guides and researchers.

The lush wet meadows covering all saddle locations might help explain why this savanna denizen is so common in the high elevation Virunga rain forest. One thing is for sure: having Cape buffalo gives every trek through the forest some thrill.

Amy came practically dead back to camp one morning around seven. And he had just fled first hill, where she had abandoned group five late the day before. Rather of following a new gorilla path, however, she came onto a huge tangle of uprooted and twisted plants covering the whole eastern edge of the little crater.

Elephants!” Looking around, Amy soon saw a trunk swaying like a captivated snake over some little adjacent trees. A single eye then started to show. A swishing tail comes next. Amy saw just their sign for months, then she was surrounded by real elephants. She hurried to tell Bill, who had remained behind to labor in camp, the news.

We raced back up the hill together. Though young trees snapped all around us, we did not see any elephants. At last another trunk showed above some thick bushes and we understood we were now upwind of this alfactory periscope.

The jungle became quiet for a few minutes, and we decided to go higher ground. Just as we arrived on a little hill, all hell erupted thirty-seven times and even remembered to get a dozen photos. The pictures revealed a line of smaller heads, ears and tusks reminiscent to those of the low land forest elephant.

Later studies would show that the Virunga elephant was most likely a link between the races of the forest and savanna. At the moment, the herd roared by and we were given a kaleidoscope of fast-moving body parts that felt like an earth tremor. And a lifetime of remember.

Though Cape buffalo is somewhat common, not to mention elephants and leopards, our only injuries in the Virunga occurred from falls in the challenging terrain and on two rare events from the gorillas themselves. The first of these injuries happened when Amy happened to be in the wrong location at the wrong moment.

Late one day on the Southside of first Hill, Beethoven couched and hurried to drive Effie away from a luscious black berry bush. Amy had been seated with Effie noting things when the on-rushing Beethoven knocked her aside. Though her foot got stuck against the root of a tree stump and her knee bent as she slid awkwardly to the side, the push itself was benign.

Usually short, the contest included some shouts and maybe a bite before Effie left the scene. Amy staggered to her feet and immediately felt a stinging ache in her right leg with any weight. She so cyst a young hypericum to create a staff and shuffled slowly back to camp. Bill started looking for her as darkness fell and came across her as she neared camp creek. Luckily the knee recovered well, and Amy returned with the group a few days.

AMY’s TIME WITH GROUP 5 also gave more understanding of gorilla behavior and group dynamics, particularly the need of learning. Gorilla moms milk their offspring for three years at minimum. The first six months see the newborns mostly depending on the natural richness of their mother’s milking.

But even before they consume solid food, Amy pointed out, babies get their first lessons about what to eat from the Virunga smorgasbord. Clinging to their mother’s hair, gorilla’s offspring not only observe what their mother is eating but also get covered in a constant shower of edible remnants. Eating these bits without swallowing provides a first taste of what is beyond their mother’s breasts.

Most infants start to try with solid meals around six months of age. Mothers still provide their main teaching in what is edible and much more vital in a world with its share of toxic plants what is not by confiscating in suitable objects.

Early on, one still has great social impact from others. If Muraha observed Pablo or puck gnawing on a piece of rotting wood, the same kind of object was probably going to wind up in her mouth. Young babies were most prone to copy the eating patterns of people around them, according to Amy’s studies.

The basis for the close awareness of their complicated environment among mountain gorillas is learning. Group 5’s home range stretched five square miles with an altitudinal range of around four thousand feet. This range included sectors of two big volcanoes, many minor cones, dozens of ravines, two major streams, a huge saddle area, and a long edge of interaction with human settlements.

Every unique quality of it required learning. Almost definitely part of a mental map, Beethovens beels to the clay cave and subalpine food supplies tracked his father across the forest many years previously. Likewise, were his pin point strategies for Bonde ya Daraja, or bridge Ravine, where the parties would cross in stately sequence over a fallen Hagenia tree (while we often followed the low path approximately twenty feet below).

While Beethoven usually led on longer excursions between two sites, adult women appeared to have similarly exact knowledge of where to get food once they were at a specific spot. Certainly collecting all this knowledge for the benefit of the future generation, ZIz, Puck, Tuck, Pablo, Poppy, Shinda, and Murara ate and played their way through their early years.

Amy had completed many months more than her intended objective for vegetation sampling by May of 1979. Only in light of an evaluation of general food resource distribution and availability would knowledge of what the gorillas chose and rejected from the forest bounty make sense.

Thirty 300-meter quadrangles that Amy had equally placed over the home range of Group 5 would provide this data. Working jointly, we could finish an evaluation of one quad in five or six hours including walking time to and from the location.

After fifteen months of rigorous parallel work schedules, our approximately thirty days on vegetation sampling offered a rare chance to spend time together in the field. It let us travel back to several locations and rekindle memories from past times among the gorillas. It was also labor that none of us has ever had any desire to do once again.

Bamboo shoots were the gorilla’s most concentrated form.

The gorilla found highest concentrated type of protein in bamboo stalks. They accounted for more than 14 percent of group five yearly diets and included plenty of fluids as well. Schaller had also seen the value of bamboo. Still, there were gorilla families practically never eating bamboo between his research location on Mount Mikeno in Congo and group 5 s habitats on the border of Rwanda.

One of them was group 4, the ill-fated clan of Uncle Bert and Digit, the long term study group of Dian and now David occupied the highest altitudes in the Visoke saddle, which seldom dipped low enough on either side to discover bamboo stands. Maybe it was a cultural issue and they really disliked bamboo, or maybe they liked their concentrated nettles.

Perhaps they disliked the rivalry from other gorillas. The issue of whether group 4 may have had greater access to bamboo if huge lower elevation stands had not been turned into agricultural fields remains permanently unknown.

The gorilla’s curiosity in ants was one surprising find. Amy has previously seen that the gorillas will actively fight over Vernonia galls loaded with bug larvae. Claims of vegetarian purity suffered far more when she gathered proof of their ant-loving inclination. She first witnessed gorillas grooming themselves by inserting driving ants into their months.

But Amy reasoned that this would be the simplest approach to eradicate a hard-biting insect that had somehow found its way onto their bodies. Then she found full driver ant bivouac torn apart by the gorillas, and their poo revealed enormous volumes of undigested ant body parts. Though it suggested a more complicated diet than had traditionally been assumed, this was far from the carnivorous and even cannibalistic inclinations seen in chimpanzees.

The gorillas clearly had particular tastes in their diet. Sources of rivalry and wounded emotions as well as occasional physical violence were bamboo shoots and galls. Likewise during the dry season were black raspberries and stalks of luscious celery.

Shelf fungus was an unusual delight whose flavor and high protein count seemed worth battling for. Usually chewing on the fungus, adolescent gorillas would then be supplanted by an older gorilla. Older gorillas would just tear off a sizable part and then attempt to sneak subtly away from the rest of the family. Although gorillas seldom transported any form of food, shelf fungus and bamboo shoots were significant exceptions.

Some other resources were as scarce but shared in a far more community sense. Every few months, Beethoven took his band to a certain location on Bonde ya kurudi, or return ravine. One gorilla at a time, people sitting outside a doctor’s office, children playing -waiting their turns, would sit like patients outside a cave like aperture.

Once completed, the gorilla would have reddish clay on his belly and rough lips. Later research verified that the clay is heavy in iron, as Amy anticipated, but it remained unknown why the gorillas required this extra supplement. Not one other Virunga gorilla population has this behavior either. Another group five favorite was the big Lobelia plant’s root.

Here also a deliberate trip was needed to get one of the numerous subalpine sites where the plant flourished on exposed high mountain slopes. While the young gorillas waited nearby for access to the goods of their digging, the adults would disperse at the location in search of select plants.

Once the roots were revealed, the gorillas chose strands to chew between their teeth, thereby tripping and consuming the valuable epidemic seeds. The one food source Amy did not gather was this paper like root bark. Apart from providing no other method for eliminating the bark, she wanted to free the already demanding, high elevation life of the Lobelia from any burden.

For the gorillas, it is vital hence remains a mystery. One thing is clear: gorillas work very hard both physically and cooperatively to get this uncommon resource.

Once the indelicate eating pattern of mountain gorillas appeared to appeal especially to a specific group 5 lineage.Effie and her off-spring, Puff and Tuck, all like eating the excrement of other gorillas. Most often occurring on rainy days, it was an irregular practice that led one former researcher to characterize it as “a hot meal on a cold day”.

More practically, the action probably indicated a food shortfall, or a need to replenish lost intestinal fauna, that was satisfied by getting the intended complement straight from another gorilla source. Watching four year old Tuck chewing on a hot lobe of Beethoven’s feces was ugly regardless of the logical rationale. But the gorillas are not here to live up to human standards.

AMY spent more than two thousand hours watching group five to finish her research on eating ecology. Her work centered on five-hour focal forms, enhanced by a single twelve-hour dawn to dusk focal on one person in each of the six age and sex groups. The physically and psychologically taxing task demanded a very great degree of focus and attention.

The body numbed from the rigors of documenting the specifics of gorilla feeding for hours at a time. While most of the body stayed dry with rain gear, Amy lost her feet. Rubber boots kept the water out only to replenish internal perspiration from the inside. And no leather body in those days could get the Virunga “water proof” designation.

Cold was much unpleasant than wet, and if one did not remain busy, the two might easily lead to hypothermia. Moving around was not an option, although during lengthy focus Amy instantly threw on a thick oiled wool sweater beneath her rain jacket after learning to interpret the feel of the air low clouds were ever present and not very helpful in determining the onset of rain.

When the large leaves of certain plants were available, she welcomed them over her boots. But if the gorillas kept eating in the rain, Amy would write inside a plastic bag; nothing could shield her hands. This kept her paper dry, but rubbing against the bags’ inside moisture caused persistent deep splits in her fingers that didn’t heal for weeks at a time over the lengthy rainy season.

Worse, the tight writing technique and exposure demanded by little note books brought regular cramping. Her fingers sometimes just quit functioning. One of the best ways to start the blood flow is Cape buffalo visits. Amy’s calendar of alternate dawn excursions and evening returns guaranteed daily exposure to times of maximum buffalo activity.

Rapidly traversing the deep Virunga understory, one soon misses the massive black figure of the beast in faint crepuscular light. Suddenly a six-foot-tall, half-ton frame appears only twenty feet in front of us. From a large base on the skull, three foot horns curve to create dagger-sharp ends. Dark liquid eyes expose no obvious inner mental function.

Among the many hazardous creatures found in Africa, the cape buffalo has the most devastating mix of fatal force, limited analytical skills, and a violent temper. When Amy had only a walking stick or machete and excellent climbing trees were sparse, this was no comforting. Luckily, she retreated into adjacent shrubs and held her breath as the buffalo rumbled by even though her score was close encounters.

final group of gorillas on that mountain.

Bill tired of his towering stature constantly collapsing beneath angled stalks another time in the bamboo zone. A stray idea sent his head into a parodies of the Oscar Mayer theme tune, a cultural artifact from Madison, Wisconsin, home of the Oscar Mayer wiener from graduate school.

Oh, I wish I were a little small Mutwa; then, my back wouldn’t be hurting me. That is what I truly want to be.

After listening, Nemeye inquired as to why Bill was signing about a Mutwa, or pygmy. Bill clarified that, like a pygmy, he would feel much better if he were only five feet tall and free from continual bending over. Oddly, Nemeye became enraged at this answer. He said with much resentment that he most definitely does not want to be a pygmy as no white guy wants to be an African.

This sparked a fascinating conversation on human beginnings as we made our way up another steep canyon devoid of gorilla evidence. In Nemeye’s account, white people must have come first on Earth because they had most of the wealth and worldly commodities. The Tutsi came next, which helped to explain why they were the typical overloads from Rwanda and kept enjoying relative riches and position.

Like their forebears, Hutu farmers arrived later and discovered only the territory they could claim and use. Poor Twa, pygmies left to hunt in the wild arrived last. It was a revealing realization that changed the generally agreed upon flow of ethinic entry in the region-first Twa, then Hutu. Tutsi and European-minded on their head. Still, from Nemeye’s point of view, it also had obvious logic.

Big Nemeye kept his racial biases to himself if he had them. After generations of Tutsi control, he belonged to the sizable Hutu majority that suddenly ruled Rwandan politics. Hutu was about the only neighbor he had across the rich Virunga lava plain. He hunted Twa in the park and bought things from Tutsi vendors in Ruhengeri. Still, one of Nemeye’s best songs included the repeated refrain: I’m a Hutu, you’re a Tutsi, he’s a Twa –we’re all Rwandans. Though Bill became bored with the song, he valued its ecumenical lessons of ethnic unity.

Generally much more taciturn than their gregarious neighbors from Congo and Uganda, Rwandans do not have a practice of disclosing much about themselves. Though they are not bashful about asking outsiders questions, nights around the camp fire usually became “tell us about America” time for Nemeye and the camp guards.

Political concerns were not of much attention, but American women’s personalities and wardrobe perplexity piqued curiosity. Thus, purchasing property was a strange idea that was quickly permeating Rwandan life, particularly in the rich lava zone near the Virungas. As with the Apollo space program, mechanized farming, super markets, and super high-ways were prominent topics.

Still, moonwalks and landings were more readily approved than coin-operated vending machines. The greatest perplexity, head shaking, and laughing at the methods of the “abazungu” came from the notion that you could put pennies into a metal box and that food-sandwiches, hamburgers, fruit, hot and cold drinks-would drop into your hands. Bill found it difficult to explain all this, but it was a fun way to finish demanding field work before turning in for night.

On Sabinyo’s Eastern Slope, we discovered a small band of six gorillas, our fourth and last group. We followed their route from an exposed lava fin close to what we thought to be the unmarked boundary between Rwanda-Uganda. The idea that von Beringe may have aimed his rifle at gorillas on that same mountain in 1902 was unsettling.

We followed the route; making nest counts along the way and caught one quick glance at the group as they traveled gradually North West around the mountain. Clearly apparent below was the jagged line created by illicit farms invading the Ugandan border. We had spent a lot of time before counting gorillas in the Congolese portion of the Virungas, but operating without permission in Uganda was different.

Recently Idi Amini had failed in an attempt to seize the North West corner of Tanzania, and now Tanzanian soldiers were massing to retaliate. Radio Uganda was stating that the whole South West border needed constant alertness. Neither did we wish to be guests of president Amin, nor did we expect to see Ugandan military at ten thousand feet. We came back one more day to finish our nest counts, then stopped working in the Ugandan field.

A shockingly huge and active hyena population chorted and hunted about our base camp all through the night. At high altitude in a rain forest, this amazing aural experience came completely unexpected. Less favorable was a story we recently heard of a visitor in Kenya who slept in an open tent sporting his boots.

Attracted to the smell of leather, a hyena dragged him out by one boot at night and chopped his foot before it was driven off. It was not a comforting notion even if Bill slept with his boots on. Added to our worries about military operations, we slept little and was glad to go on in the morning.

Our final camp was on the Gahinga-Muhavura saddle; a group of Rwandan troops watched from a little tin cabin. Though it was unclear whether this represented the war situation over the border with Uganda, two hundred yards away, or their anxiety about animals in the park, they were tense. Though some appeared glad to have company, they were not a very outstanding bunch.

Now, even in Schaller’s day, we were in a part of the park that had never supported many gorillas. We still had to cover a lot of ground, however. Fortunately, Gahinga had relatively few significant ravines and its towering bamboo towers created cathedral-like arches much more accessible than the bamboo thickets to the West.

On Gahinga, at lower level, we did come across unusual mimulopsis trees whose high stilt roots were efficient at tripping weary legs. Although we discovered several ancient gorilla nests at multiple locations, there was no indication of passage within the last six months. But our very presence sent off volleys of piercing piao! From medium-sized golden monkeys (cercopithecus mitis kandti), a species native to the area whose golden cloak is as arresting as its call, alarms from local troops.

Muhavura would be our last challenge.

Our next task would be Muhavura.For Karisimbi in the West, its 13,540-foot cone provided for an almost ideal bookend. Fortunately, much of the Ugandan section was buried in a recent lava flow that could not sustain gorillas, hence we did not have to risk an armed confrontation. Though we did not have to run the military sort of danger, our quick trips into the Ugandan section revealed little evidence of animals.

Though we did hear hunters employing dogs with bells, our quick trips into the Ugandan section revealed little evidence of wild animals. From below, twice bullets rang out. Though its slopes were high, hiking atop Muhavura was not too challenging; there were no major vegetal or physical obstacles.

Much of the bulk of the mountain was above the tree line, where an open steppe type habitat predominated. Brilliant red and green long-tailed malachite sun birds raced manically around this alpine moorland, their long, thin beaks suited like those of humming birds to sipping nectar. Northern double-collared sun birds flashed their metallic green and purple plumage. Bushbuck also grazed here, but he soon barked and ran on sight.

One day we found no gorillas and went to investigate the peak. We had to crawl over a tangle of twisted, moss-covered alpine senecio, a woody shrub spanning many generations to a height of ten to twelve feet, near the summit. In what seemed to be the biggest natural jungle gym in the world, this entangling labyrinth stretched hundreds of yards.

Our prize for passing was a perfectly spherical crater lake on top of Muhavura. The lake was only twenty yards wide, its surface barely eighteen inches from the edge. Bill laughed as he bent to sip from the cold black sources at the top of the planet, wondering whether it ever over flowed. In seconds clouds arrived and disappeared.

Clear times allowed us to view crowned fields of Rwanda to the South and lakes far to the North in Uganda. With clouds returning, a cold seeped beneath our skins. As the day came to an end, we grudgingly abandoned our watering place.

On Muhavura, our only gorilla interaction also happened to be the final census count. Late in one day we came across new gorilla signs. After backtracking to do two nest counts, we went back to notify the group and finish our count the next morning. Seven people—one silver back, two adult females, another unsexed adult, and three juvenile gorillas—were verified present.

Leading down hill, the fresh track of crushed herbs would pass the yellowed bones of a jackal, its foreleg still in the deadly grasp of a poacher’s wire trap. Not far away, the gorillas were audible. Bill approached till he came across a hand reaching into a bush about twenty feet distant. Then he ascended a tree to expose an elderly female’s face seated in a day nest eating gallium.

She looks back for about a minute, moving her head back and forth and allowing time for a nose print from a harsh gaze with reddish brow. She then runs softly behind those headed forward.By 13:10, dread muck is everywhere.

Common behaviors of wild gorillas when faced by people were silent flight and diarrhea. They also let us know when to go alone and do our last nest counts.

We traveled carefully counter clockwise around Muhavura for four more days till we arrived at the open lava field along the Eastern slope near the Rwanda-Uganda border. In that time, we traversed and investigated sixteen ravines, several of which harbored good gorilla habitat. Still, we never saw another gorilla or any evidence of any other animal save birds.

On Mt. Karisimbi, at the very western extremity of the park, we had observed the same kind of vacant environment. This ensured that the number of gorillas could continue grow. However, it also meant that these areas remote from the headquarters of the central park were killing grounds controlled by poachers where gorillas had been slaughtered. We left the park and headed down to an ancient colonial home at Gasinza, close to the foot of Mount Muhavura, late afternoon.

Though the mansion required paint and the foundation was crumbling, its scale, stone arches, and panoramic vistas suggested a more magnificent past. Now Drs. Alain and Nicole Montfort called home here. Belgian ecologists Alain and Nicole loved the Akagera National park in Eastern Rwanda savanna-wetland complex with a mild, dry climate.

Alain hated the hostile Virunga surroundings, but during his short stay in the North he had worked to enhance park security and administration. Alain and Nicole, hosts, got initial unofficial census results as well as other news from the forest. Mostly however, we delighted in delicious cuisine, fine wine, and great company. Bill delighted to utilize his considerably better French vocabulary after weeks of practical Swahili.

Solving conservation issues is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle for which the box has no picture; many components are missing and too little time to review all the surviving pieces. Our goal was to combine biological and social economic study to get the most comprehensive picture feasible. The census gave the initial bits to the very difficult jigsaw of how to better understand and safeguard the mountain gorillas.

Taking little over eight hours, the climb home from Gasiza to Karisoke covered around twenty-25 kilometers. There was plenty of time to consider what he had discovered and what it may entail for the gorillas. In 1959–1960 Georgr Schaller conducted the first Virunga census.A simmering civil conflict in Rwanda prohibited him from sampling certain locations, but his baseline figure of four hundred to five hundred people came from actual counts along with estimations based on habitat features.

A team of Karisoke scholars carried out the next census over three years, between 1971 and 1973.Their results revealed a sharp drop in average group size and proportion of young along with a corresponding fall in 300 to 275 gorilla count. Comparisons with the present figures swirled in Bill’s thoughts as he strolled over agricultural fields along the park boundary.

The good news was that, after its 1960s fast collapse, the population seemed to be stabilizing.Our lowest count was 252 people, which subsequently would be projected to represent 260,000 population.Better yet, the number of groups had dropped from thirty-one to twenty-eight, so we had discovered forty-two babies under three years old instead of only thirty-three in the same age class.

The bad news was that gorillas were clustering in the middle, particularly near Mount Visoke, and avoiding the Eastern and Western ends of the park. On Mt. Mikeno, where Schaller had tallied more than two hundred gorillas, there were only eighty-one.

Mts. Sabyinyo, Gahinga, and Muhavura backed only thirty-four gorillas in five groups. Objectively, it was at least a mixed message. Emotionally, it was a huge relief not to discover more losses, particularly in light of the tragic events of last year.