Dian Fossey Fund: The Legacy of Karisoke and the Mission to Protect Mountain Gorillas
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund is the world’s oldest and most active mountain gorilla conservation organisation. Dian Fossey founded it in 1978 during her lifetime of research in Volcanoes National Park. The fund has carried forward her vision of research-based gorilla protection through four decades of sustained work. Its programs include daily gorilla monitoring, habitat protection, anti-poaching patrol support, community engagement, and scientific research.
Dian Fossey established Karisoke Research Center in 1967 in the saddle between the Karisimbi and Bisoke volcanoes. She chose the site for its position within the core range of the gorilla families she had come to study. Her 18 years of field research at Karisoke transformed scientific understanding of mountain gorilla behaviour and ecology. Her work is credited with saving the mountain gorilla from the extinction trajectory the species was on in the 1970s.
Dian Fossey: The Research and the Legacy
Fossey arrived in Rwanda in 1967 and established Karisoke as a permanent research station. Her approach to gorilla research pioneered habituation through patient, non-threatening proximity over extended periods. This technique, developed through trial and error in the Virunga forest, became the standard method for gorilla research and tourism habituation worldwide. Every gorilla trek conducted today builds on Fossey’s original habituation work.
Fossey documented gorilla family structure, social hierarchy, communication, and infanticide behaviour in detail never previously achieved in the wild. Her popular account, Gorillas in the Mist published in 1983, brought mountain gorillas to a global audience. It generated international awareness and funding that sustained the conservation effort through the difficult years that followed.
Fossey was murdered at Karisoke on 26 December 1985 in circumstances that have never been definitively resolved. She is buried at Karisoke alongside the gorillas whose deaths she had documented and mourned over her years of research. Her grave is accessible to visitors at the Karisoke Research Center site. It is a point of pilgrimage for many visitors who connect their Rwanda trip to Fossey’s legacy and to the conservation history she embodied.
Karisoke Research Center Today
The Karisoke Research Center operates today from a permanent base in Musanze. Field researchers maintain daily presence in Volcanoes National Park monitoring all gorilla families under the fund’s care. The daily monitoring program tracks health status, group composition changes, births, deaths, and inter-group interactions. This continuous record now spans more than 50 years and constitutes one of the longest great ape field studies in science.
The fund’s current headquarters, the Ellen DeGeneres Campus, opened near Musanze in 2022. It provides state-of-the-art research facilities, conservation training infrastructure, and visitor engagement spaces. The campus serves as the operational centre for the fund’s Rwanda program. It also trains conservation professionals and community members who are based there throughout the year.
Research conducted at Karisoke informs all management decisions for Volcanoes National Park’s gorilla conservation program. The fund’s staff advise on habituation decisions, group health interventions, tourist access management, and population-level monitoring. The partnership between the fund and the Rwanda Development Board creates a research-management relationship that applies scientific knowledge directly to conservation decision-making in the park.
Engaging With the Fossey Fund in Rwanda
Visitors who want to engage directly with the Dian Fossey Fund’s work can visit the Ellen DeGeneres Campus in Musanze. The campus offers visitor programs explaining the fund’s history, its current research activities, and the conservation challenges facing mountain gorillas today. It provides the most direct educational engagement with mountain gorilla conservation available to visitors outside of the gorilla trek itself.
The hike to the original Karisoke Research Center site in the forest is available as a guided trek through Volcanoes National Park. The route passes through the forest to the saddle where Fossey established her camp and where she and her gorillas are buried. This hike is one of the most emotionally resonant activities in the entire Rwanda safari circuit for visitors who have read Gorillas in the Mist or who have a serious interest in great ape conservation history.
Supporting the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund through membership and donation programs provides a direct financial contribution to the conservation work that makes gorilla trekking possible. The fund accepts individual and group support that goes directly to field research, anti-poaching activities, and community programs in the Virunga landscape.
Plan Your Fossey Fund Visit
A visit to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund’s Ellen DeGeneres Campus in Musanze is a natural addition to any northern Rwanda itinerary. The campus visit provides historical context and current conservation information that deepens the gorilla trek experience. It connects the forest encounter to the scientific and conservation work that made it possible.
African Wild Trekkers includes the Fossey Fund campus visit in Rwanda northern circuit itineraries for visitors who want to understand the science behind the mountain gorilla conservation story. Contact us to plan a Rwanda gorilla safari that engages with the research legacy at the heart of the world’s most successful great ape recovery program.
