Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International

The Digit Fund was created by Dian Fossey in 1978 for the sole purpose of financing her anti-poaching patrols and preventing further poaching of the mountain gorillas.

Digit took five spear wounds in ferocious self-defense and managed to kill one of the poachers' dogs, allowing the other 13 members of his group to escape.

Fossey mostly opposed the efforts of the international organizations, which she felt inefficiently directed their funds towards more equipment for Rwandan park officials, some of whom were alleged to have ordered some of the gorilla poachings in the first place.

"[6]Busy with her research in Africa, Fossey enlisted the help of her friends, primatologist Richard Wrangham and TV presenter David Attenborough, who approached conservation organizations located in the UK including the Fauna Preservation Society (FPS) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which declined Fossey's request in favor of supporting an approach emphasizing tourism to Rwanda.

[7] To coordinate donations to Rwandan authorities, FPS enlisted Fossey's former student and apprentice and one of her chief detractors, Sandy Harcourt.

[9] Fossey asked her friend Robinson McIlvaine, the head of the nonprofit African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, to serve as secretary-treasurer of the Digit Fund until she could find a salaried executive director to assume control over the operations.

In four months in 1979, the Fossey patrol consisting of four African staffers destroyed 987 poachers' traps in the research area's vicinity.