Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

Field Research for the 21st Century

Mountain gorillas are critically endangered. There are about 880 of them left on the planet, so we want to have data in real-time that we can use to see if there’s a conservation threat. Having the data up in the cloud really helps.

—Tara Stoinski, President, CEO, and Chief Scientific Officer for Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International

Fifty years ago, zoologist Dian Fossey began her mission to study and protect the mountain gorillas of Rwanda with a camera, a pencil, and notebook. Today, her work continues through the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI) with the help of a cloud-based database and a custom mobile app.

The motto “Helping People. Saving Gorillas.” defines the DFGFI mission: the conservation of gorillas and their habitat through a holistic approach that includes daily monitoring, research, education, and ecosystem health services. Conservationists are on the ground in Rwanda and the Congo all day, every day, collecting data on—and protecting—gorillas. The community programs help impoverished local communities with basic needs and provide conservation education.

Thanks to technology and funding from Oracle, the DFGFI can continue its work and share 50 years of gorilla data that has been stored in the cloud. Working together, DFGFI and Oracle also developed a custom mobile app to replace the pencils and notebooks the field researchers were using. This helps get more gorilla data in the cloud faster for study and analysis.

Data in the cloud is not only helping today’s conservationists—it’s also helping DFGFI educate future scientists. Students from the national university are hosted at their center during the year, to inspire the next generation of scientists in Africa who can protect the animals and their ecosystem. And because the data is easily accessible in the cloud, the Oracle Education Foundation can also use it to educate students in the US.

The DFGFI's conservation efforts are paying off; the population of mountain gorillas in Rwanda has doubled over the past five decades. By improving the livelihoods of those living near the gorillas and continuing to educate students with gorilla data in the cloud, DFGFI is creating future conservationists in Africa and across the globe.