In the Kingdom of Gorillas

From the founders of the world-famous Mountain Gorilla Project, an empowering account of their efforts to save the mountain gorilla in Rwanda and how they succeeded—even in the midst of a horrendous civil war. In 1978, when Dr. Bill Weber and Dr. Amy Vedder arrived in Rwanda to study mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey, the gorilla population was teetering toward extinction. Poaching was rampant, but it was loss of habitat that most endangered the gorillas. When yet another slice of the Virunga Mountains was targeted for development, Weber and Vedder recognized that the gorillas were doomed unless something was done to save their land. Over Fossey''s objections, they helped found the Mountain Gorilla Project. The MGP was designed to educate Rwandans about the gorillas and about the importance of conservation, while at the same time establishing an ecotourism project—one of the first anywhere in a