Copyright 2001, Environmental News Network
October 29, 2001
By Stacey Fowler

Editor's Note: You have a chance to meet Dr. Amy Vedder in person on Tuesday, October 30, at the San Francisco Public Library: See details at the end of this article.

Dr. Amy Vedder is vice president at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is based at the Bronx Zoo in New York. She also directs the living landscapes program there. She and her husband, Dr. Bill Weber, are co-authors of a new book, In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land (Simon & Schuster, $27.50) that details their experiences working to conserve endangered mountain gorillas in Rwanda. The husband-and-wife team founded the Mountain Gorilla Project in 1979, which was a pioneering effort in the eco-tourism movement. The couple also witnessed the civil war and genocide that ravaged Rwanda in the 1990’s. Below is the second of a three-part series from a conversation between Dr. Vedder and ENN’s Stacey Fowler.

Stacey Fowler: I understand the Mountain Gorilla Project actually had members of both of Rwanda's major ethnic groups working together and that they exhibited acts of heroism during the most violent period of the civil war. Can you comment on that, please?

Amy Vedder: Yeah, there have been so many amazing stories that emerged from the horror of the war and genocide in Rwanda -- stories of heroism on the part of people from both of the major ethnic groups of the country. I think some of the most touching to us were actually from another forest project we had worked with in southern Rwanda where in one instance the Hutu staff who were part of the conservation project there actually helped to hide a Tutsi woman, who otherwise would have been killed, in one of the project buildings up in the rafters so that she would not be found by killers as they passed through.

She was allowed to stay there under lock and key. She was provided with food and shelter during the worst of the war and she was able to survive because of that. If those people who were helping hide her had been found out they would have been killed as well as she. It's those kind of stories that give you tremendous hope for the country truly achieving peace and allowing for human rights for all the people of that nation.

SF: Do you think these Hutu and Tutsi conservationists reacted heroically because of a mutual respect and admiration for one another that stemmed from their common goal of protecting the land and species?

AV: I think one thing that's really hard for people outside of Rwanda to understand is that there is a deep and longstanding common history between the two major ethnic groups in the country. For hundreds of years people had lived together, assimilated, intermarried to some extent -- the ethnic divisions were nowhere near as large as one would expect given the genocide that took place.

 There was a very short time in which people's hatred was drummed up and into people where it had not existed at all. So the fact that people worked together didn't seem unusual at all in our minds when we were working on either of those conservation projects in Rwanda. The fact that people did risk their lives for one another during genocide I do think is outstanding, and I think a lot of it had to do with individual relationships and just a strong sense of ethics and rights.

SF: How important is it to consider the needs of local people when seeking to protect wildlife and habitat?

AV: Bill and I have felt since we began this work that unless one can find justification for conservation that makes sense to the local people and the national governments that the long-term likelihood of success is extremely small.

That doesn't mean you always agree and it doesn't mean that people will have the same set of values. But what we tried to do in the Mountain Gorilla Project, and other work since, is find areas where some of our interests and concerns in conservation of wildlife overlap in some way, and it may be a different way, with local people and governments.

In the case of the Mountain Gorilla Project, we were lucky on a number of fronts. Gorillas are so humanlike and in showing students pictures of them, or in showing films to communities so that people could actually see what they're like, people are immediately -- no matter what culture they come from -- attracted to these animals. They're fascinated, they ask great questions; they see the similarity between people and gorillas. So that's a tremendous advantage.

But there's no doubt about the fact that a very poor people, which is what you're dealing with in Rwanda generally, who are just barely getting by and desperately need land for agriculture to just be able to subsist also have to look at other values. In a highly rapidly growing population with no land available there have to be other economic alternatives and unless one helps them find those, then you cannot succeed at protecting land, protecting resources, protecting gorillas. Anyone working in conservation in Rwanda with gorillas is very much up against the wall and there have to be other alternatives that address people’s well being or else the pressures will only continue to mount.SF: What do you foresee as the future for the mountain gorillas and the people of Rwanda in the coming decade or so?

AV: I think the future of mountain gorillas and people in Rwanda is absolutely integrally linked. The basic human development needs in that country begin with peace and stability and continue through basic education and health services.

Only as those kinds of things are more assured for people, can they look beyond today’s existence and be able to make the choices that allow protected parks and gorillas to survive alongside them. And so those things need to be assured, as well as the basic conservation efforts of protecting a national park or gorillas.

If people can make the choices to conserve and they see the reason to do so, they see how wonderful these animals are, they see the importance of the forest to their economy, they recognize that the ecological stability of these forests in capturing water is important to their agricultural land and their livelihood, all of those things are absolutely essentially wrapped together. I think because of that there’s likelihood that if we can succeed on one front we can have a great chance of success on the other.

So as long as Rwanda remains stable and can progress in a careful way in development the chances of protecting gorillas are greater. At the same time, we must work really hard to protect the population that exists now in the national park. The borders of the park can’t be pushed back because the gorillas don’t have any kind of margin for error in maintaining a population. So at the same time, conservation measures have to be extremely strong. But in Rwanda you can do both and to succeed at both, one helps to foster the other. Dr. Amy Vedder will be speaking in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Public Library on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2001, from 6 - 8 p.m. There is no charge for this event. For more information, contact Terry Gwiazdowski at (415) 557-4500. Error: Unable to read footer file.