Talk:Dian Fossey: Difference between revisions

Diane Fossey was potrayed by her scientific colleagues, who envied her for her research station, as eccentric and obsessed, and all kinds of stories were circulated about her.

The bolded portion seems to be, without citation, Non-NPOV. It has been removed.

Hey, what was Dian fossey's weakness that she had

I don't know if these two comments are by the same person but I will try to answer them both. As far as the weakness, I hear from someone who once knew her (an anthropology professer) that she was not a nice person and had bad people skills. Supposedly she began kidnapping the children of poachers who kidnapped gorilla babies and held them ransom until the poachers returned the gorillas. However this has never been verified and considering her early work as a child therapist ( not to mention her love of children) this is highly unlikely. Although my teacher didn't like her too much, I think she sounds kinda inspirational, though perhaps a little misguided tactically.

Dian killed because of tourists

It s the greed for money that killed Dian. I think it is really disgusting how ORTPN, its director Laurent Habirameye, Protais Zigiranyirazo (the préfet and animal trader of Ruehengeri) and some of Dians former students let her be killed and appreciated her death; just to exploit the gorillas for tourism.

Would a poacher brake unarmed into her cabin when everybody knew that Fossey made no calms about using her guns?

Before her death Dr David Watts lobbied hard to formulate means to take Karisoke away from Dian. ORTPN said if they wanted Dian to leave they would have simply asked her to do so. That 's a joke. ORTPN asked her to leave and Dian who was the founder and through her background as occupational therapist made close research of habituated groups possible threatened to burn down Karisoke if she 'd had to go. As Dian wrote, it was a threat and "the only way to save a lifetime of work".

I also think it is disgusting how David Watts then could take over as Karisoke director after Dians death. Some researchers are really losing their minds due to their ambitions.

10000 tourist visiting the gorillas that s way too much. In Mowat s book it is discribed how Dr Amy Vedder defecated among the gorillas and let them eat her feces and how Dian was horrified when she found that out. Afterwards gorillas like Nunkie died of human intestinal parasites. And imagine 10000 people defecating in the park....When I was there there was litter and garbage all over the place- even tampons.

This article could benefit from some mention of her scientific contributions, namely her work regarding the gorillas. There should likely be a whole section on it. It's kind of sketchy now. I'll put it on my list (and cross my fingers) but I invite anyone who has additional information handy/current to expand and embellish.

Also, the accusation regarding her murder should be cited, and I believe there are several theories regarding her death. These would be good to mention. --DanielCD 14:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Dian Fossey was very unlikely killed by poachers who would' ve killed her in the forrest with little risk to themselves. According to Farley Mowats book she was very likely killed by those who viewed her as an impediment to the financial exploitation of the gorillas through tourism.

According to the Mowat biography of Dian including many of her personal letters the Rwandan tourism office ORTPN, WWF, AWF, FPS and some of her former research students all wanted to oust Dian from the camp she created. Why should a poacher wait 18 years and then decide to kill Dian by braking into her cabin? This is very unrealistic. If Dian had been killed by poachers in the forrest tourists would be reluctant to come. So the scenario of a poacher killing Dian was constructed inside her cabin.

According to the Mowat biography the killer must have been someone familiar with Dians cabin who knew the outlay of her home. There wasn' t any blood on the walls just around her body which argues that most of the whacks to her head could have also been produced after her death or after she lost consciousness.

This article is not objective

I think this article has a slight bias in favor of Dian Fossey and discounts any biographical sources that are critical of her. In the Dark Romance of Diane Fossey, for example, various accounts of the possible rape of Diane by Congo soldiers are discussed, but the book never concludes that this was an actual event.

The life of Dian Fossey was controversial, and the accounts of those that knew her are not consistent with each other. This lack of concluding evidence about events her life is now part of her biography, and we may never know the exact truth about many of the details of Dian Fossey's life. Knarfmo 05:20, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

In my view the article is now very biased in favor of Dian. But maybe I am biased a little the other way because I have just read the Weber/Vedder book? Pcb21 Pete 16:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

So- You guys want to say that the article is not objective enough because Fossey denied that she was raped and Vedder and her friends claim that this was exactly so?

I have no personal investment in any pro or con Fossey argument, but I have heard that she was contraversial for a number of reasons, including her dismissive attitude regarding the economic conditions that lead some to poach gorillas, and her arrogant, paternalistic attitude of protecting "her" gorillas. There is almost none of this mentioned in this article. In fact, there is no contraversy section at all. Surely, she had detractors, and this article should include a discussion of them if it is to be balanced.Kemet 18:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

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The article isn't objective because any critique of Dian Fossey is dismissed as being irrelevant because, for example, those views supporting these critiques belonged to her "detractors", failing to grapple with the fact that she may have developed "detractors" because of her shortcomings. It implies that these people were "detractors" before ever having met Dian Fossey, and that her bearing didn't somehow influence their negative attitudes of her. In short, the article is dismissive of her detractors. MisterQuickly 6:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

It is probably not irrelevant to mention Fossey's many feuds and personal quirks, not least because these seem to have adversely influenced the success of her project. A recent article in the Telegraph describes Fossey as "extravagantly eccentric," which sounds about right. But many of her most pugnacious critics, including her younger students and the particularly misogynistic Harold Hayes, don't take account of her extreme isolation and loneliness, the vulnerable position of a young American woman alone in a remote part of a foreign continent, or of her great (though sometimes misguided and myopic) moral courage. A more nuanced picture of this complex character is needed, but because there are still (as there were in her lifetime) Fossey-worshippers and Fossey-haters, this is difficult to achieve. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.220.6 (talk) 17:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Fossey worshippers vs. Fossey haters

So what special trait does the so called "Fossey-haters" distinguish from the so called "Fossey-worshippers"? Can it be that the Fossey haters are especially those who personally had a brush with Dian and who also have a problem with female authority? If Your boss gives You a hard time- it s annoying anywhere. I understand that it s particularly hard when You're in the middle of the bush and there aren't many places to go...and for some it's even harder if they got dressed down by a woman. (Watts, Stewart, Vedder, Weber, van Becke...they all fall into this category even though all of them wouldn't have their careers and today's jobs if it wasn't for Dian Fossey who taught them the ropes).'Mr Objective' 20.September 2008

How about people follow WP:TALK and stop random discussions like this? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Quotes and measles

Can we get a citation for the claim that in 2005 eight gorillas died of measles? The only documented measles outbreak there I can find was in 1988. I've been researching this for a paper, would be very interested to know if there was another incident.209.115.196.133 13:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Look at the news of the Dian-Fossey-Gorilla-Fund from time to time.

The article is about the person Dian Fossey, not the character from the movie Gorillas in the Mist. I'm removing the quote "No, I won't let them turn this mountain into a goddamn zoo." because it doesn't appear that she ever said this. Having it in here is confusing. Better to stick with actual quotes from Dian Fossey in the quotes section, and leave movie quotes to the pages about the movie, I think -- especially where the movie is a drama rather than a documentary. ThisIsMyWikipediaName (talk) 17:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Killing gorillas to generate donations??

I really wonder whether some gorillas were killed in order to generate public cash flow to so called wildlife organisations and ORTPN?? In her last years Dian Fossey was able to keep poaching at zero with her petrols and the little money she had. These days the wildlife organisations "caring" for the gorillas have budgets ranging from far over a million dollar a year and the gorillas are still being killed!!! Bill Gates was in the Virungas predicting the gorillas would die out soon. I mean hey...he has money to buy all the adjacent lands, double the size of the national park and provide 24 hour patrol security yet he doesn 't give a darn thing...

Yeah because just because he's a billionaire who earned all his money, he should give it all to save some fucking apes. That'd be cool if he did do that or something else virtuous with his money, but to say he doesn't give a shit? What are you doing to save gorillas, Mr./Ms. High Horse?

Additions from User:72.218.114.141

The information the anon wishes to include in the article is unsourced (WP:NOR) and epitomizes the use of weasel words. I am not challenging the veracity of the information, however, there needs to be some kind of attribution for this [1]. I am going to politely ask that this information not be reintroduced without the proper verification. Thank you! Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 22:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

dian fossey's gorilla friends

digit pucker coco —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.110.204.18 (talk) 19:34, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Education section

Currently, the education section says "While working in Louisville (living a few miles south of the town on a farm called Glenmary) she attended a lecture by Louis Leakey. She subsequently received her PhD from Darwin College, Cambridge, for a thesis entitled 'The behaviour of the mountain gorilla' in 1976." It sounds like she recieved a PhD for attending a lecture. Perhaps someone with a source can integrate the two paragraphs of this section and talk about how she ended up in Cambridge to begin with, started her research in gorillas, and ended up writing about that in her dissertation.Shuneke (talk) 21:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)