8/16/2023 0 Comments Donate dian fossey gorilla fund![]() “It’s the whole idea of a complex web of life. Amphibians, however, do live in wetlands, “and something eats those amphibians,” she said. “The gorillas we study don’t ever go to the wetlands, so if you were just studying gorillas, you wouldn’t learn anything about the health of the wetlands,” Stoinski said. They don’t depend on one place to have their babies or to mate.” So, to understand how gorillas and their habitats are weathering climate change, scientists must examine other elements in the ape environment: indicator species like wetland plants, amphibians, and birds. Gorillas, like people, can survive even when their ecosystem changes, Stoinski said. The long-term commitment benefits another stakeholder: planet Earth. The fund, at 55 years old, is the world’s longest-running gorilla research and conservation program. “We’re not in and out,” said Stoinski, who has led the Fossey Fund for eight years following more than a dozen as a research scientist with the organization. ![]() They’re very much working with communities to ask, ‘What will be beneficial for you?’” In It for the Long Haulĭeveloping trust with local communities takes time. ![]() “We have more than 300 staff in Africa, and all but four of them are Rwandan or Congolese. Yet she stresses that the Fossey Fund, a donation-dependent nonprofit, doesn’t take a top-down approach. in experimental psychology from Georgia Tech, and the prerequisites for veterinary school she completed at Tufts, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in history. To lead these efforts, Stoinski draws on her background in science, including a master’s degree in zoology from Oxford, a Ph.D. ![]() In addition, the Fossey Fund has signed a 25-year agreement with the community to manage Nkuba as a conservation area. Also key is “addressing why people are so dependent on the forest in the first place.” That means creating programs that advance food security and economic health-from the cultivation of protein-rich, fast-growing mushrooms to fish farming to beekeeping to bread baking. Getting the land recognized is only one piece of the puzzle, said Stoinski. At 2,400 square kilometers, Nkuba is now five times the size of the mountain gorillas’ Virunga habitat. Over the last 10 years, the organization has partnered with local groups to create Nkuba Conservation Area, a community-protected forest, and to seek formal recognition for it from the Congolese government. To increase ape stability, the Fossey Fund looks for ways to support human stability. “We still have beautiful habitat, but the animals-and not just gorillas, but chimps and elephants -have been impacted by decades of civil unrest.” Conflict minerals are mined extracts such as gold and cobalt (used for electric car batteries) that are sometimes sold to fund fighting. Estimates suggest that about 60% of the Grauer’s gorilla population has been lost in the last 25 years, “a direct result of poaching, driven by extreme poverty, by conflict, by conflict minerals,” Stoinski said. Unlike mountain gorillas, all of whom live within a national park, most of Congo’s Grauer’s gorillas live on lands with no formal protection. The Fossey Fund expanded there 20 years ago to address the dwindling population of another subspecies of gorilla, known as Grauer’s gorillas. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conservation involves a whole different set of challenges. While the Rwandan government is looking at expanding the park by buying back land sold off decades ago for agriculture, Stoinski said, that’s not a definite or quick fix. “In a larger habitat or with more individuals, that kind of change could have a smaller effect on the survival of the species.” “If you have one natural disaster that comes through-a forest fire, for example-or one pandemic that gets into the population, when you’re starting out with so few individuals in such a small space, it means they’re more susceptible,” Stoinski said.
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