How did the Ellen DeGeneres Campus come about?

It has long been our dream at the Dian Fossey Fund to have a purpose-built facility with state-of-the-art laboratories and educational spaces so we could expand our work. In 2017, we’d outgrown our rented space. Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, announced a lead gift to start the project. In February 2022, our dream became reality when we opened our Ellen Campus.

Can you tell us about the plight of the gorillas?

Mountain gorillas are one of the few conservation success stories, thanks to the pioneering work of our founder, Dian Fossey, who brought their plight to the world’s attention five decades ago. In this area, there were just 250 gorillas in the 1980s. Today, there are over 600. It’s amazing, but it’s a fragile success. Many of the threats from Dian’s time are still here, and with such a small population existing in a tiny habitat, mountain gorillas will always be a conservation-dependent species. Sadly, the situation for other types of gorillas is dire – the Grauer’s gorillas we protect over the border in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are one of the world’s most endangered primates.

And more about your grassroots work?

Our 300-plus staff in Africa are proud to be the longest-running and largest organisation dedicated to gorilla conservation. Each day our trackers protect the gorillas in the forest, while our researchers expand our understanding of the species and surrounding biodiversity. We also work with the human communities that live near gorilla habitat, developing food and water security, education and initiatives to improve their livelihoods while lessening their reliance on the gorillas’ forest home. Finally, we train the future conservationists of Africa and beyond. In its first month, the Ellen Campus hosted almost 900 students on field trips.

CHAMPIONING GORILLA CONSERVATION