Copyright 2001, Environmental News Network
October 8, 2001
By Stacey Fowler, Environmental News Network

Dr. Amy Vedder is vice president at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is based at the Bronx Zoo in New York. 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 and its people in the 1990’s. Below is the third in a three-part series from a conversation between Dr. Vedder and ENN’s Stacey Fowler.

Stacey Fowler: What role can the rest of us play to help ensure that the people of Rwanda are successful in achieving peace and economic stability, while protecting the region’s habitat and wildlife? And not only there, I suppose, in terms of the entire world.

Amy Vedder: I think the first thing we need to do is care. And the only way we can care about what happens in a place like Rwanda, or what happens to animals like gorillas is to become informed. Americans don’t know a lot about what happens in the rest of the world, how people live, or what these issues are. It’s really important that people read, that they inform themselves, that people join with others in conservation organizations or in other fashions to become involved.

People can volunteer efforts. Also, very importantly, and we shouldn’t shy away from it, people can contribute financially. That can be done through conservation organizations and also by ensuring that our government does the right thing in the foreign aid it provides to countries like Rwanda. We’re currently living in a time under an Administration where there isn’t a significant amount of interest in providing foreign assistance to even the poorest of the nations in the world. As we were working in Rwanda, we were extremely heartened that the USAID mission, the foreign assistance mission, in Rwanda began to support more development activities, but also conservation activities.

After the war in 1994, our foreign assistance has never picked up to the level it was before, nor has it begun to contribute at all to wildlife conservation in a country where that conservation can also help to be an engine for development. So we can lobby our own government to do the right thing here, as well.

SF: What do you hope readers of the book will take away from it?

AV: Well, I hope that readers put it down and feel that Africa is an important place, that it’s a place we can’t ignore, that there are things that we as Americans can do to help improve the lives of people there, and that can help us to do wildlife conservation better to help to protect such very rare and special species like gorillas.

I also hope that, on another level, people realize the world is complex, conservation is not a simple formula, and that it takes tremendous effort of dedicated people to see this kind of thing work. I hope people turn around and decide they do care, they will make a difference, that in our own lives here in the United States we set appropriate models and show that we care enough in our own country to do the right thing for wilderness and wildlife conservation.

SF: Can you tell me about the process of writing In the Kingdom of Gorillas?

AV: This is the first book for both Bill and myself and it’s been a fascinating experience. It’s been a very rewarding experience because it’s allowed us to think back on some amazing times in our lives, but also to reflect on how things can change over time.

SF: People tend to become frustrated about the environmental problems we hear about all the time and often seem to think that one person is powerless to do anything to about it. But here you and Bill have demonstrated in an incredible way that, indeed, two people can go out there and make a real difference. Perhaps you could comment on that?

AV: Well, I appreciate you’re saying that. I think Bill and I tend to be quite humble when we speak about work we’ve done and some of the changes that we’ve seen. I think generally we just feel tremendously fortunate to have been in Rwanda during these kinds of times and to have been able to help make a difference for animals that were right on the brink of extinction and in a country that would allow us to help them take those kinds of steps.

So for us, it was a tremendously empowering experience to realize that as two very young professionals we actually could make a significant difference. I think it’s had an impact on the rest of my life and that feeling of doom and gloom that I think many people feel in conservation -- you know, that the world is going to hell and that we’re going to have difficulty changing these trends. We really can make a difference. And I encourage everyone to go out and do his or her part to do just that. Error: Unable to read footer file.