On February 01st 2022 the much anticipated Ellen De Generes Campus opened adjacent to Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda.
The Ellen Fund has given the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund what they have always wanted a home to expand and continue their conservation efforts. But not just any home a state of the are Campus that houses students, scientists, tourists, conservation partners, community members. The eco friendly facility is based around three buildings the Sandy and Harold Price Research Center, the Cindy Broder Conservation Gallery and the Rob and Melani Walton Education Center. Visitors are also will be able to see exclusive artefacts from Fossey’s 18 years of living with gorillas as well as augmented and virtual reality experiences.
As a child Ellen was inspired by Dian Fossey and said “Dian Fossey has always been a hero of mine, and so it’s been the honour of a lifetime to support this project,”
Dr. Tara Stoinski, the Fossey Fund’s president and chief scientific officer said “It is our hope that people who visit the Ellen DeGeneres Campus will leave inspired to make a difference, just as Dian Fossey did.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
The Ellen Fund and The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund have worked together to create a permanent home in Rwanda to enable more research and conservation work to be done to continue to learn about Mountain Gorillas. For more than 50 years The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund been at the forefront of Gorilla Conservation of two of the four sub species, the critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the endangered mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park using a unique for point model that has proven successful.
Protecting Gorillas
Conducting Science
Training Conservationists
Helping Communities
Dian Fossey feared that mountain gorillas would be extinct by the year 2000. But the population in the region grew from a low of 250 gorillas in the 1980s to more than 600 today, which attributed the “rare conservation success story” to the work of Fossey and other staff member
