In the Kingdom of Gorillas, Amy Vedder, Author, Conservation Biologist with The Wilderness Society

Summary: 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. Vedder’s book, In the Kingdom of Gorillas, introduces readers to entire families of gorillas, from powerful silverback patriarchs to helpless newborn infants. Vedder take us with them as they slog through the rain-soaked mountain forests, observing the gorillas at rest and at play. An expert in conservation and ecology, Dr. Vedder is Senior Vice President for Conservation at The Wilderness Society (TWS) in Washington, DC. She has worked for more than 30 years in dedication to wildlife and wildland conservation, applying ecological and social science to save biologically rich and threatened places. Amy Vedder is widely known for her pioneering studies of mountain gorillas in Rwanda during the late 1970s and as co-founder, with her husband Dr. Bill Weber, of the Mountain Gorilla Project. She is the author of several books, including In the Kingdom of Gorillas, which she wrote with Bill Weber, and is the subject of a biography written for middle school students titled, Gorilla Mountain.