Clare Richardson, president and CEO, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Zoo Atlanta visitors watch as rare gorilla twins Kali and Kazi play with their family group.

Atlanta businesses and institutions are partnering with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to finance scientific research and conservation efforts in Africa, according to Clare Richardson, the fund’s president and CEO.

The Fossey Fund carries on the work of its namesake, who spent 18 years in Rwanda’s Virunga Mountains doing face-to-face research with gorillas before being murdered by poachers in 1985.

Ms. Richardson said that maintaining gorilla populations is part of the bigger picture in environmental conservation for the fund.

“Having ‘gorilla’ in our name can be confusing,” she said.  “Gorillas are a means to an end; they’re the symbol of the rainforests in which they live.  The global perspective is keeping these rainforests on our planet.”

Ms. Richardson credited Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner with helping to raise environmental consciousness.  “His early use of wildlife films created a generation of people who were more aware of wildlife in other lands,” she said.

The fund’s headquarters, which performs all of the duties of a corporate office including fundraising, marketing and research support, moved from Denver to Atlanta in 1995.

The fund is currently receiving significant financial support companies like law firm Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, marketing and advertising firm T.G. Madison Inc. and Zoo Atlanta, and it gets technical support from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“Our relationships with Atlanta firms allow very low overhead so we can send the bulk of our contributions directly into the field,” Ms. Richardson told GlobalAtlanta.

The benefits offered by Zoo Atlanta, which Ms. Richardson said has “one of the best captive gorilla programs in the country,” were a major draw in bringing the fund to the Georgia capital. 

The fund is housed on the zoo grounds in a building between the gorilla and orangutan habitats that once housed orangutans while they were not in the zoo exhibit. 

Apart from office space, the zoo provides security, IT support and maintenance to the fund headquarters free of charge.  Zoo Atlanta Director Dennis Kelly works closely with the fund as a member of its board of trustees.

Further support comes from Kilpatrick Stockton in the form of pro bono legal work, including trademark issues and licensing contracts.  The firm helped to work out legal issues involving the use of gorilla sounds provided by the fund in the 2005 film “King Kong,” according to Richard Horder, an environmental attorney with Kilpatrick Stockton and chairman of the fund’s board.

Kilpatrick Stockton is digitizing the scientific data collected by the Fossey Fund’s Virunga, Rwanda-based Karisoke Research Center over the past 40 years.  When the project is completed, the fund will be able to provide an online database to researchers and institutions around the world.

Ms. Richardson said that T.G. Madison provides advertising design and placement and that the firm’s chairman and CEO, Joanne Truffelman, is the current vice-chair of the fund’s board.

While these companies provide financial support, Georgia Tech is providing technological assistance to the fund in its field research, particularly in the use of global positioning system (GPS). 

Scientists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, headed by Nicholas Faust, began providing satellite mapping and gorilla tracking by GPS remote sensor technology to researchers at the Karisoke Center in 2000.

Georgia Tech scientists are mapping a 26,000-square-mile wildlife corridor linking two national parks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Maiko in the north and Kahuzi-Biéga in the south.

As a part of the fund’s community development programs in Rwanda and the Congo, Dr. Faust helped to establish a GPS training program at the National University of Rwanda in Butare and brought Rwandan students to study at Georgia Tech.

Other community development programs undertaken by the Fossey Fund involve supporting local health clinics, finding sources of safe water for local people and researching sustainable sources of energy.

Ms. Richardson said that any of these projects provide opportunities for the fund’s partner organizations to become involved in environmental conservation and the redevelopment of post-conflict African nations.

The Fossey Fund is organizing events at Zoo Atlanta to celebrate the Karisoke Center’s 40th anniversary.  An upcoming event is a presentation on gorilla conservation by Katie Fawcett, the center’s director, Nov. 13 at 7:00pm.