DIAN FOSSEY

Dian Fossey was born in San Francisco, California in 1932. She was an excellent student and she was interested in animals since she was a little girl.
She worked on a farm and loved her work with the animals  but she wanted to see more of the world and its wildlife.
A friend of hers travelled to Africa and brought a lot of pictures and interesting stories. When she saw the photos and heard the stories she decided that she wanted to go to Africa.
She arrived in Kenya in 1963 and John Alexander, a british hunter, was her guide.
She met the famous anthropologist Louis Leakey and he told her about Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees in Tanzania. Diane Fossey visited Jane in the Gombe Reserved and learnt about her
research methods with chimpanzees.
Later she travelled to the Virunga Mountains in Rwanda where she observed and studied gorillas. Some local people and hunters were taking baby gorillas to sell them and they were killing the mothers and other big gorillas to sell parts of their bodies.
She worked very hard to protect them, she lived with them and loved them, but finally she was murdered in 1985. There were many theories about her murder but it was never resolved.