Unforgotten

Fore­word by Ellen DeGeneres

In 1963, young Amer­i­can Dian Fos­sey spent all her sav­ings and took out a loan to real­ize her dream — to go to Africa. It soon became her life’s mis­sion to study and pro­tect the few moun­tain goril­las left on Earth. Fos­sey had no expe­ri­ence or for­mal sci­en­tif­ic train­ing, but she was smart, pas­sion­ate, and strong-willed — and she just hap­pened to meet pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gist Louis Leakey, who helped her pur­sue her goal of study­ing ani­mals in the wild. Fos­sey set up a research camp and threw her­self into track­ing and observ­ing moun­tain goril­las. Over the next 18 years, Fos­sey got clos­er to goril­las than any human ever had before. As she learned to mim­ic their behav­ior and became accept­ed by them, Fos­sey’s stud­ies grew into a labor of love and a mis­sion to pro­tect her beloved goril­las from poach­ers and oth­er threats—no mat­ter what the cost.

Sad­ly, Fos­sey was mur­dered at her camp in 1985, and to this day, her death remains a mys­tery. But her lega­cy lives on through the Dian Fos­sey Goril­la Fund: In 1973 Fos­sey record­ed only 275 goril­las liv­ing in Vol­ca­noes Nation­al Park; there are about twice that many today. Fos­sey’s sto­ry is one of tragedy, but also pas­sion, sci­ence, and preser­va­tion. As Jane Goodall, once said, “If Dian had not been there, there might be no moun­tain goril­las in Rwan­da today.” Unfor­got­ten is the dra­mat­ic con­clu­sion to Sil­vey’s tril­o­gy of biogra­phies on Leakey’s “Tri­mates.” With unpar­al­leled sto­ry­telling, side­bars, maps, and an award-win­ning design, Unfor­got­ten will inspire the next gen­er­a­tion of bud­ding sci­en­tists and conservationists.