While she was alive Fossey was severely criticized by many for her opposition to poaching. The WWF and National Geographic both cut off her funding because she refused to back off from her outspoken and physical opposition to poaching. According to Fosseys own letters, the Rwandan national park system, the World Wildlife Fund, African Wildlife Foundation, Fauna Preservation Society, the Mountain Gorilla Project and some of her former students tried to wrest control of the Karisoke research center from her for the purpose of tourism, by portraying her as unstable. In her last two years, Fossey did not lose a single gorilla to poachers. Meanwhile the Mountain Gorilla Project, which was supposed to patrol the Mount Sabyinyo area, covered up gorilla deaths caused by poaching and diseases transmitted through tourists. Despite this the public contributions for gorilla conservation went to these organizations and not to Fossey, although the public often believed their money would go to Fossey and this belief was encouraged by many of these same groups, some of whom blatantly exploited her name. As others became rich from her work. Fossey wrote that much of the money collected for Gorillas was instead put into tourism projects and as she put it to pay the airfare of so-called conservationists who will never go on anti-poaching patrols in their life. Fossey described the differing two philosophies as her own active conservation or the international conservation groups theoretical conservation. This kind of corruption and disingenuous “conservation” has grown more and more prominent since her death as conservation has become a profitable business for many groups. In other words there are groups that do, and then, there are groups that do “mail-outs.” Today poaching continues to eradicate large numbers in Africa and threatens many species with extinction. The same method used to capture gorillas is now used in Taiji, Japan to capture dolphins with entire pods being wiped out to provide “specimens” for display in dolphinariums. From the Captain
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:42:10 +0000
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