A Transnational Wildlife Drama: Dian Fossey, Popular Environmentalism, and the Origins of Gorilla Tourism

This essay offers a transnational examination of popular environmentalism in the post–World War II era. By exploring the many stories that have coalesced around Dian Fossey, specifically her fieldwork with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, her rise to fame as a female celebrity scientist in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the representation of her work in popular media, the essay examines Fossey’s contradictory role in the emergence of gorilla tourism as a new form of global wildlife conservation. Fossey’s story and her legacy expose the complex intersections between gender, race, nature, and cultural representation as environmentalism emerged as a global issue in the second half of the twentieth century. Her work with the mountain gorillas and her image as a celebrity scientist created a new logic for human–gorilla encounters that informed a new way to value wildlife. The essay speaks to the larger implications of thinking and acting with animals on a global stage and what it reveals about the cultural origins of transnational environmental policy as well as the impact of these culturally informed environmental practices. It traces the shift away from traditional conservation and the Romantic ideal of wilderness toward the new conservation and the ideal of natural capital.