Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver is an American actress. Prolific in film since the late 1970s, she is known for her pioneering portrayals of action heroines in science fiction and horror films. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award.
Dian Fossey was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name.
The Virunga Mountains are a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, in the area where Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Uganda meet. The mountain range is a branch of the Albertine Rift Mountains, which border the western branch of the East African Rift. They are located between Lake Edward and Lake Kivu. The name "Virunga" is an English version of the Kinyarwanda word ibirunga, which means "volcanoes".
The mountain gorilla is one of the two subspecies of the eastern gorilla. It is listed as endangered by the IUCN as of 2018.
Volcanoes National Park is a national park in northwestern Rwanda. It covers 160 km2 (62 sq mi) of rainforest and encompasses five of the eight volcanoes in the Virunga Mountains, namely Karisimbi, Bisoke, Muhabura, Gahinga and Sabyinyo. It borders Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda. It is home to the mountain gorilla and the golden monkey, and was the base for the primatologist Dian Fossey.
The Karisoke Research Center is a research institute in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park. It was founded by Dian Fossey on 24 September 1967 to study endangered mountain gorillas. Fossey located the camp in Rwanda's Virunga volcanic mountain range, between Mount Karisimbi and Mount Bisoke, and named it by combining the names of the two mountains.
The eastern gorilla is a critically endangered species of the genus Gorilla and the largest living primate. At present, the species is subdivided into two subspecies. There are 6,800 eastern lowland gorillas or Grauer's gorillas and 1,000 mountain gorillas. Illegal hunting threatens the species.
Gorillas in the Mist is a 1988 American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan and a story by Phelan and Tab Murphy. The film is based on a book of the same name by Dian Fossey and the article by Harold T. P. Hayes. It stars Sigourney Weaver as naturalist Dian Fossey and Bryan Brown as photographer Bob Campbell. It tells the story of Fossey, who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is a charity for the protection of endangered mountain gorillas. The Digit Fund was created by Dr. Dian Fossey in 1978 for the sole purpose of financing her anti-poaching patrols and preventing further poaching of the mountain gorillas. Fossey studied at her Karisoke Research Center in the Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda. The non-profit fund was named in memory of Fossey's favourite gorilla, Digit, who was decapitated by poachers for the offer of US$20 by a Hutu merchant who specialized in selling gorilla heads as trophies and gorilla hands as ashtrays to tourists.
The Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels, is a name given to three women — Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas — chosen by anthropologist Louis Leakey to study primates in their natural environments. They studied chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, respectively.
Amy Vedder is an ecologist and primatologist involved in conservation work with mountain gorillas.
Titus was a silverback mountain gorilla of the Virunga Mountains, observed by researchers almost continuously over his entire life. He was the subject of the 2008 PBS Nature/BBC Natural World documentary film Titus: The Gorilla King.
Ian Michael Redmond OBE FZS FLS is a tropical field biologist and conservationist. Renowned for his work with mountain gorillas and elephants, Redmond has been involved in more than 50 documentaries on the subject for, among others, the BBC, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Redmond was also involved in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, spending some time with Sigourney Weaver so she could better understand her character.
Mount Mikeno is an extinct volcanic mountain located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo section of the Virunga Mountains along with Mount Nyiragongo, Mount Nyamuragira, Mount Karisimbi, Mount Bisoke and Mount Sabyinyo. At 4,437 metres (14,557 ft) Mount Mikeno is the second highest peak in the Virunga Mountains after Karisimbi, and the 13th highest in Africa. Mikeno means "poor" and is so named for its harsh slopes which preclude human habitation.
The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is an international conservation organization created with the intent of preserving Africa's wildlife, wild lands, and natural resources. Founded in 1961, the organization helped establish conservation programs at the College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka in Tanzania, and the Ecole de Faune de Garoua in Cameroon. The Foundation works with governments and businesses to develop conservation efforts as a source of revenue.
Robinson McIlvaine was an American career diplomat who was President of the African Wildlife Foundation from 1978 to 1982.
The International Gorilla Conservation Programme was formed in 1991 to ensure that the critically endangered mountain gorillas are conserved in their habitat in the mountain forests of the Virunga Massif in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa is a 1987 biography of the conservationist Dian Fossey, who studied and lived among the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. It is written by the Canadian author Farley Mowat, himself a conservationist and author of the book Never Cry Wolf.
Robert Henry Nixon is an American film director, writer and conservationist. His films, often focused on the battles of tribal peoples and field biologists, include Amazon Diary, America The Beautiful, The End of the Game, Fossey's War, Gorillas in the Mist, Endangered Species, The Last Rivermen, American Heroes, Mission Blue, Great White Highway, The Lord God Bird, Peter Beard's Africa: Last Word From Paradise, The Flight Of Double Eagle II, So Long Lady and The Falconer.
Gorillas Revisited is a 2006 BBC documentary starring American actress Sigourney Weaver. The role is a call-back to her portrayal of Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist (1988).
