No Monkeying Around Here! Reddit's Citizen Investors Bet Big on Atlanta-Based Gorilla Nonprofit
In another move that took the world by surprise, Redditors recently launched a new campaign of donating to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, an Atlanta-based nonprofit. The organization, named after the late primatologist and conservationist Dian Fossey, is dedicated to various efforts supporting gorillas in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Atlanta-based nonprofit funds and creates numerous education, research, protection, and conservation programs supporting gorilla populations.
The social media platform Reddit is a “network of communities based on people's interests." One of its most noteworthy subreddit communities, r/WallStreetBets (WSB), is a group of citizen investors best known for sparking last January's GameStop short squeeze in the stock market. Hedge funds had wagered against GameStop, but WSB users decided to buy shares in the company, thus driving up the share price. WSB's motto is #apestogetherstrong, stemming from the movie "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes", in which one of the characters states, “Apes together strong.”
One of WSB's members recently tweeted that he had donated money to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, which allows people to symbolically adopts a gorilla. The post spread like wildfire, resulting in thousands of WSB members donating more than $350,000 to adopt 3,500 endangered mountain gorillas in a mere six days—a welcome surprise for the Fund, which generally receives about 20 adoptions over a normal weekend. The first gorilla to be adopted by WSB, of course, was named GameStop.
Dr. Tara Stoinski, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund was thrilled, stating that the money will be used for their field programs that “track, monitor and study gorillas in their natural habitats”. In an interview with the BBC, Dr. Stoinski said “They've truly made a difference for our world and shown what can be accomplished when people come together. When we save gorillas and we save forests, we save our world."
Dr. Stoinski is a primatologist specializing in gorilla behavior. She spent a number of years researching gorillas at Zoo Atlanta and was awarded her Ph.D. in Psychology by the Georgia Institute of Technology. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Biology, awarded by Oxford University in the UK.
Adoptive ‘parents’ of Dian Fossey gorillas receive a photograph, adoption certificate and personalized video of their animal, whom they are also able to rename. Adoption fees range from $60 to $150, which the NPO uses to study and protect the gorillas in Rwanda in east-central Africa.
Why is supporting gorillas so critical? As an endangered species, the current mountain gorilla population is only about 900, being decimated not only by poaching and hunting, but by their habitat being destroyed. Poor local communities cut trees for firewood or to use the land to grow crops. This has placed enormous pressure on the survival of the gorillas, and daily intervention is required to protect them against extinction.
Dian Fossey, the renowned primatologist who the Fund is named after, spent 20 years in Rwanda studying and advocating for gorillas until she was tragically murdered by poachers in 1985. After her death, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund opened its North American headquarters in Atlanta, partnering with Zoo Atlanta.
