Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund is dedicated to the conservation, protection and study of gorillas and their habitats in Africa. Our successful, integrated approach includes four strategic pillars:
1) Daily Protection: To ensure that gorilla populations remain stable, we have boots on the ground in the forest 365 days a year, monitoring gorillas, destroying snares, and protecting the gorillas’ habitat from human encroachment.
2) Scientific Research: We’re the world's longest running gorilla research site, and we add to our 50+year dataset on gorillas every day as our scientists study not only gorillas but the other plants and animals that live in their biodiverse forest home.
3) Training Future Leaders: We train hundreds of local university students each year, and we help young scientists and staff members to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees and to further their professional and technical development in the field, thereby ensuring the success of the next generation of African scientists and conservationists.
4) Helping Communities: Conservation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and without the support of local communities, we cannot protect gorillas or their habitat. We work closely with the people who share the gorillas' forest home to address food and water security, education and other critical needs.

Our strategies involve:

I. Using gorillas as our flagship, implement effective, enduring, people-centered conservation strategies
II. Leading science-based conservation through robust, diversified research and training programs
III. Creating the leadership and systems to support transformational growth within the organization
IV. Growing our fundraising to meet the conservation needs of the future with goal of 25% revenue growth by 2025
V. Building communication capacities to maximize our brand, relationships, and revenue

Our organization has more than 50 years of experience in gorilla conservation. During that time the gorilla population has grown — in fact in 2017, mountain gorillas were moved from “critically endangered” to “endangered” thanks to sustained efforts by us and others on the ground in Rwanda. We’ve also expanded into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where we use the knowledge we’ve gained over the past five decades to protect the critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas. Our people-centered approach to conservation is time tested and has been proven to both protect gorillas and effectively engage local communities.

In 2021 the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo officially recognized three new community-managed forest concessions (CFCLs), collectively called the Nkuba Conservation Area, that we have been working to develop since 2011. These CFCLs give local communities ownership and management rights over their own forests. Since then we’ve expanded the area we protect in these forests to 1,583 square kilometers, which house an estimated 200 critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas.

In 2022 we will open our new permanent headquarters: The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, a multi-acre, eco-friendly facility adjacent to the Volcanoes National Park, will include laboratories, a computer lab and library, flexible office and meeting space, classrooms, an interactive educational exhibit and on-site residences for visiting students and scientists. The Campus will embody our mission to conserve and limit its impact on the environment, through rainwater harvesting, green roofs, the planting of over 250,000 native plant species and a constructed wetland to treat wastewater and promote biodiversity.

In 2017 we started World Gorilla Day to celebrate and promote conservation of wild gorillas. Since then:
- We’ve removed 4,881 snares from the rainforests of Rwanda and the DRC, and none of the gorillas in the groups we monitor have been injured or killed by a snare.
- The population of mountain gorillas we help protect in Rwanda grew by 8%.
- We’ve helped to train more than 1,000 university students in Rwanda and the DRC. These students are employed throughout the region as educators, scientists and leaders, helping to shape the future of conservation in their countries.
- We’ve increased our teams in Rwanda and DR Congo by 42%. Our decades of work have proven that this boots-on-the-ground effort is critical for conservation success.
- We helped tens of thousands of people through projects aimed at addressing livelihood and food security and education. Examples include bamboo and mushroom cultivation, kitchen gardens, small animal husbandry, primary and secondary school nature clubs, conservation debates, conservation camps and teacher trainings.
- We’ve collaborated with scientists from around the world to publish more than 60 scientific papers on conservation issues for gorillas and larger biodiversity issues.
- The ultimate metric of conservation success is improved outcomes for wildlife. So perhaps the most exciting collective accomplishment is that after decades of collective effort, mountain gorillas were reclassified from critically endangered to endangered on IUCN’s list of endangered species, moving them one step further from extinction. They remain one of the world’s few conservation success stories thanks to the collaborative work of governments, conservation NGOs and local communities.