Today Gorilla Doctors honors the life of Ms. Ruth Morris Keesling, the founder of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.

Ruth passed away on April 18, 2018 surrounded by her family.

Ruth’s incredible dedication to mountain gorillas, the admiration she had for Dian Fossey, and her love of Rwanda resulted in the establishment of the Volcanoes Veterinary Centre in 1986. For the first time, there was a wildlife veterinarian (Dr. Jim Foster) whose sole responsibility it was to provide life-saving veterinary care to injured mountain gorillas in the wild.

At the time, Ruth was serving on the Board of Directors of the Morris Animal Foundation (MAF), a non-profit organization founded by her father Mark Morris and dedicated to animal health.  Having met Dian Fossey at a primate conservation meeting, she and fellow Board members made plans to travel to Rwanda to meet with Fossey to discuss the need for emergency veterinary care for gorillas. Just a few days before their scheduled departure, Dian Fossey was murdered. Ruth and her colleagues travelled to Rwanda nevertheless, saw the mountain gorillas, and vowed to return with the resources necessary to build a clinic.

The Volcanoes Veterinary Centre led to the establishment of Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP) by MAF, which for many years was led by Gorilla Doctor’s Board member Dr. Rob Hilsenroth. The MAF ran the Volcanoes Veterinary Centre through civil war and the Rwanda genocide, and in 2006 helped the MGVP become a stand-alone non-profit organization. In 2009 MGVP partnered with the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine to become Gorilla Doctors.

In addition to her work to establish the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project, Ruth and her family were instrumental in building the Wild Animal Resource Management (WARM) department at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, where many dozens of young veterinarians and biologists from the east-central Africa region have earned their university and advanced degrees in conservation and wildlife health. In 2015 Ruth was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Makerere University in recognition of all that she did to make WARM such a successful center for teaching and mentoring. “This was the first honor of its kind given by Makerere University to anyone,” said John Bosco Nizeyi, Gorilla Doctors’ Capacity-building Coordinator, a Professor in the WARM Department at Makerere University, and a long-term friend of the Keesling family.

Gorilla Doctors expresses its condolences to the Keesling family, and will be forever grateful to Ruth Morris Keesling for all that she did for mountain gorillas.

 

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