When Amy Vedder was a student at Swarthmore more than 50 years ago and went on strike to protest the Vietnam War, the refrain from the college was one of support: “Go do something about it.”
“As for the gorillas, their population has more than doubled to nearly 700 now and still climbing,” Weber told the more than 400 graduates and their family members, who applauded, so much so, he had to pause his speech for a moment. By the end of Vedder’s freshman year — he was a year older than her — they were dating and the day before his graduation practice, they got married on campus. Then they both entered the Peace Corps in Africa for two years where they first saw gorillas and began to think about careers in conservation. They went on to get doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin Madison — he in land resource management and she in zoology.
“She saw the local people as the enemy,” Weber said in an interview. “We found that the large majority of people thought the gorillas should be protected, too. Hardly any of them had anything to do with the poaching.” Tourism overall in Rwanda now generates more than $400 million in revenue annually, more than coffee, tea, and minerals exports combined, according toIt has created thousands of jobs, and helped to rebuild the country after the genocide in 1994, Weber said. The silverback, a mature male gorilla, appears on the 5,000 Franc bill in Rwanda.
While the excitement of the day for most students was getting their degrees, Alexa Bartlett, 21, a physics major from Austin, Texas, said she was also interested in what Vedder and Weber had to say.
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