Gorilla: Struggle for Survival in the Virungas - Softcover

Nichols, Michael; Schaller, George B.; Richardson, Nan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0893813494 ISBN 13: 9780893813499

Publisher: Aperture, 1899

Synopsis

Gorilla recounts in remarkable color photographs the strange and powerful story of the last few hundred members of a nearly extinct species: the famed mountain gorillas of the Virunga volcanoes. These inhabitants of the forested mountain range bordering Rwanda, Uganda, and Zaire, were brought to the attention of the world through last-ditch efforts to preserve their dwindling survival. Told here with rare force and eloquence is the story of a people, the land, the animals, and the environment that struggle to maintain a delicate balance in one remote corner of the earth.

The photographs by Alabama-born adventure photojournalist Michael Nichols were taken during three trips to Africa since 1981. A contract photographer for National Geographic magazine and a former member of Magnum Photos, Nichols is celebrated for stunning color photography, seen in the pages of Geo, Life, Esquire, Travel & Leisure, Stern, Outside, Paris-Match, and the other international magazines. His extraordinary images, both eerie and tender, capture perfectly the fascination of the mountain gorilla.

The authoritative essay by George B. Schaller, Director for Science of Wildlife Conservation International at the New York Zoological Society and author of nine books, including National Book Award winner The Serngeti Lion, summarizes the last two decades in the existence of the gorilla and expands on his own pioneering studies in the late 1960s. Schaller explains how the animals fend off extinction in a beautiful, primitive land, and offers a potent warning of the effects of tampering with a fragile ecosystem.

Since the original publication of this book, the survival of the mountain gorilla-one of the environmental success stories of the world-has been once again thrown into a precarious position due to the unstable political climate in Rwanda. Now more than ever it is important to remember the vital ecological role of these rare animals.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Nichols has flown into the eye of a hurricane, trekked across the Canadian arctic to record the world's longest rappel down the sheer face of Mount Thor, the place the Eskimos call "the land that never melts," run the rapids below Victoria Falls, been pitched overboard into the Indus River in the Pakistani Himalayas, walked across Death Valley in summer, and photographed the giant prehistoric Komodo lizards in Indonesia. The French magazine Photo called him the "Indiana Jones of photography" and the Overseas Press Club gave him a prize for reporting above and beyond the call of duty, an award usually reserved for combat photographers.

Born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, first contact with photography came when he was a draftee in the army in the early 1970s, while assigned to the photographic unit. Later he studied photography at the University of North Alabama. There he met former Life magazine photographer Charles Moore, who introduced him to the Black Star agency. Black Star introduced him to Geo, where he was given an assignment on the spot. He has never stopped working since. In 1983 he joined Magnum Photos as a nominee, and was a member from 1988 until 1995. Today he is a contract photographer for National Geographic magazine. He is also the author of The Great Apes: Between Two Worlds (National Geographic Society), and Keepers of the Kingdom (Thomasson-Grant), a photographic book reflecting on the revolution in America's zoos. Nichols and his wife, a painter, and their two sons live in Virginia.

George B. Schaller's interest in wildlife led him to take his B.S. degree in zoology and his B.A. in anthropology at the University of Alaska. He obtained his Master's and Doctoral degrees form the University of Wisconsin. From 1959 to 1960 he took part in the African Primate Expedition in the eastern Congo and western Uganda. It was during these two years that he made his study of the mountain gorilla, reported in his book, The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior. Additional books by George B. Schaller include: The year of the Gorilla, The Deer and The Tiger, The Serengeti Lion, Golden Shadow, Flying Hooves, Serengeti: A Kingdom of Predators, Mountain Monarchs, Stones of Silence, p0and The Giant Pandas of Oolong. Since 1966 he has been with Wildlife Conversation International, a division of the New York Zoological Society, and is now a director for science. When not in the field, he and his wife live in Connecticut.

Review

"At a time when so many of the world's great natural areas are endangered, it is a pleasure to read about one that has been saved, particularly when the impetus for its salvation is a creature as magnificent, appealing and--yes--even humanlike as this book shows the mountain gorilla to be." --Maggie Nicholls, The New York Times Book Review

"The most brilliant field zoologist of this century and an extraordinary photographer working together in a single volume about the most majestic of endangered animals, the mountain gorillas." --Michael Crichton

"When you stare into the face of this mystery we call 'gorilla,' you are moved to consider not conservation solely but the fundamental issues of our time-dignity, compassion, the indisputable sanctity of life. If we are to undo the dark legacy of colonialism, of which the mountain gorilla is, in a disturbingly real sense, latterly a victim, it is upon these issues that we must stand. Michael Nichols's and George Schaller's filed work on the slopes of the Virunga volcanos, in this sense, is not only illuminating but courageous." --Barry Lopez

"This lovely and eloquent book is part of an urgent, cooperative effort that gives us some hope that gorillas may survive in their natural home." --Edward Hoagland

"By having become so imminently threatened with extinction, like the snow leopards of the Tibetan Plateau, the gorillas of the Virunga Volcanoes have become a metaphor for the imperiled state of all living creatures on our planet. In speaking out so eloquently on behalf of such a unique threatened species, zoologist George B. Schaller and photographer Michael Nichols are, in effort, speaking out for all of us." --Orville Schell

"Michael Nichols's photographs are, by turn, savage, serene, exotic, seductive, and brutally honest. Along with George B. Schaller, whose pioneering work with the mountain gorillas has inspired a generation, Nichols has created an important, thrilling, and thought-provoking book." --Tim Cahill

"Sad that these glorious photographs may one day be our final portrait of the mountain gorilla, I pray Mr. Nichols's brilliant record will prove, once and for all, that the fate of this fellow primate is not just the responsibility of Africa, but of all the world." --John Heminway

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 1899
• ISBN 10: 0893813494
• ISBN 13: 9780893813499
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112