Additional information
by Bill Weber (Author), Amy Vedder (Joint Author)
When Bill Weber and Amy Vedder arrived in Rwanda to study mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey, the gorilla population was teetering toward extinction. Poaching was rampant, but it was loss of habitat that most endangered the gorillas. Weber and Vedder realized that the gorillas were doomed unless something was done to save their forest home. Over Fossey's objections, they helped found the Mountain Gorilla Project, which would inform Rwandans about the gorillas and the importance of conservation, while at the same time establishing an ecotourism project -- one of the first anywhere in a rainforest -- to bring desperately needed revenue to Rwanda. In the Kingdom of Gorillas introduces readers to entire families of gorillas, from powerful silverback patriarchs to helpless newborn infants. Weber and Vedder take us with them as they slog through the rain-soaked mountain forests, observing the gorillas at rest and at play. Today the population of mountain gorillas is the highest it has been since the 1960s, and there is new hope for the species' fragile future even as the people of Rwanda strive to overcome ethnic and political differences.
Author Biography
Dr. Bill Weber has worked for over thirty years in the field of international conservation. He lived in Africa for nine years, where he and his wife, Dr. Amy Vedder, helped to establish the famous Mountain Gorilla Project in Rwanda and several other park and forest protection initiatives across the Congo Basin. Later, as the director of North America Programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society, he oversaw dozens of projects from Alaska to the Adirondacks, addressing issues from lynx and wolf recovery to fire ecology, ecotourism, and community-based conservation. He also co-edited African Rain Forest Ecology and Conservation, co-authored In the Kingdom of Gorillas, and served as co-chair of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.
Dr. Amy Vedder is an ecologist and primatologist who has worked for over thirty years as an international wildlife and wild lands conservationist. She helped to establish the famous Mountain Gorilla Project in Rwanda with Dr. Bill Weber, pioneering ecotourism and community outreach programs in Burundi and Rwanda. She later served as program director for Wildlife Conservation Society's Africa Program, as well as senior technical advisor for the GEF/UNDP, and senior vice president for conservation at The Wilderness Society. She has lectured at Yale School of the Environment, co-edited African Rain Forest Ecology and Conservation, and co-authored In the Kingdom of Gorillas.
