I Went to Rwanda to See the Silverbacks. I Came Home Obsessed with Maggie, a Female Like No Other

The rebellious life of a mountain gorilla who became a leader, a protector and eventually a solo traveler.

^{Photograph by Faith Katunga.}

By the time Maggie appeared on a wall at the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, a 12-acre research and conservation center near Kinigi in the green volcanic foothills of Volcanoes National Park, I had spent about 90 minutes climbing behind trackers who cut a path through thick vegetation and kept watch for buffalo, followed by an hour moving through the forest with the Mutobo gorilla group.

Somewhere in the thick of that precious hour, with the animals finally in front of us and everyone trying to keep up as they moved deeper into the bush, my glasses vanished into the undergrowth. After years of wanting to see mountain gorillas, I had carried them up the mountain so I could study every eyebrow, knuckle and silver hair properly. Instead, at the exact moment clear vision became most useful, I apparently donated mine to the forest.

One of the trackers doubled back and found them, displaying the composure of a man accustomed to rescuing visitors from their own decisions. With my glasses restored to my face, I could finally take in the silverback properly. He was every bit as fascinating as I had hoped, immense and composed, with a back that seemed to occupy most of the available forest.

I put everything I learned in Volcanoes National Park into a field guide below: permits, porters, packing, and what that hour is actually like. Free for subscribers, drop your email and it’s yours.

^{Photograph by Faith Katunga.}

Each movement shifted the atmosphere around him, and our group responded with the hushed concentration usually reserved for heads of state. A body capable of enormous force spent much of the encounter eating and observing the family around him, which made the force more apparent. He had no need to advertise it.

A few yards away, while the silverback held the forest with barely a movement, a mother ate as her baby ricocheted around her. The baby climbed and inspected its surroundings with tremendous cuteness, pausing every so often to take a bite of its own.

Its mother continued her meal while keeping track of the commotion beside her, an arrangement familiar to anyone who has watched a woman attempt lunch in the company of a small child. After a climb that had humbled my knees and my dignity, that domestic little scene gave the encounter another register entirely.

Then there was Maggie

Once the Mutobo group began moving, we moved with them, ducking under branches and pushing through vegetation while the trackers kept the family in sight. The nettles found our legs, knees, and every patch of skin our clothing had failed to defend. A 2025 peer-reviewed study identified three species eaten by mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park: Laportea alatipes, Urtica massaica and Girardinia bullosa.

Their stinging hairs break on contact and release the irritants responsible for the burn, while gorillas handle Laportea alatipes with techniques that reduce contact with its most heavily armed parts. The plants taking small pieces of our composure were lunch to the animals we had come to see. They simply had better technique.

The intimacy of that hour depended on strict limits. Rwanda allows visitors to spend one hour with each habituated gorilla family, an arrangement our guide, Ezechiel, placed within the larger conservation effort.

“You cannot conserve what you don’t know,” he said. “When you come to visit, you appreciate. After appreciation, you love. After loving, you conserve. You cannot separate tourism and conservation.”

After the trek, we returned to The Bishop’s House, where a long shower and a good night’s sleep restored what the mountain had taken out of us. The ten-room hotel sits about 25 minutes from Volcanoes National Park and understands the peculiar hours of gorilla trekking, serving breakfast from 5:30 a.m. and preparing packed breakfasts for guests heading into the forest. That morning, the staff had equipped us with raincoats and gaiters to protect our lower legs from wet vegetation and persistent nettles.

Properly rested, we drove to the Ellen Campus near Kinigi the following morning. Inside the exhibition, decades of observation had turned the gorillas visitors glimpse briefly into individuals with names and complicated family histories. One panel stopped me. Beneath the words “A female like no other,” Maggie stared out from a large photograph with the calm, mildly unimpressed expression of someone who had survived a great deal and had little use for your reaction.

^{Photograph by Faith Katunga.}

The text beneath her portrait listed the behavior that had made her exceptional. Maggie had traveled alone, become the first female observed destroying poachers’ snares, and assumed leadership of her group after its silverback died. She had also become a favorite of Sigourney Weaver, who encountered her while filming Gorillas in the Mist in Rwanda. By the time I finished reading, the female gorilla I had never met had begun taking over the story.

Life after the silverback died

Born on June 15, 1980, into Group 5, one of the mountain gorilla groups first studied by Dian Fossey, Maggie came from a female line with form. Her mother, Effie, headed the largest matrilineal family known to researchers, and Effie’s daughters repeatedly rose to dominant positions. After years in silverback Pablo’s group, where she gave birth seven times and lost four infants, Maggie left her three surviving offspring in 2007 and joined a recently formed family led by the young silverback Bwenge.

She soon became its top-ranking female and his closest partner in maintaining cohesion. When outsiders approached, Bwenge handled the confrontation while Maggie gathered the group. What fascinated me about Maggie’s record was how thoroughly it resisted the sentimental language often attached to female leadership.

Researchers described her as quick to groom and support others, as well as one of her group’s most frequently aggressive members. She led interactions and acted as a protector, responsibilities usually associated with males. A 2025 study based on more than 20 years of observations of 164 wild mountain gorillas used her as a case study in how social behavior changes with circumstance.

After Bwenge died on October 1, 2014, from injuries sustained during an encounter with a solitary silverback, Maggie was 34 when she stepped into the exposed space he left behind. Over the following month, trackers watched her guide the seven-member group through four encounters, sometimes leading them away and at other moments charging and screaming at intruding silverbacks with the family gathered around her.

^{Photograph by Faith Katunga.}

Wageni, a silverback from Ugenda’s group, eventually helped draw Bwenge’s remaining family into a larger unit where they again had adult male protection. Maggie soon reestablished her senior female rank, having carried them through the vulnerable period and into greater security. Among the details at the campus, the one about Maggie destroying hunters’ snares stayed with me more deeply than the rest. The Fossey Fund had recorded her dismantling traps placed in the forest, behavior rarely seen among female mountain gorillas. Maggie had apparently decided the forest’s risk-management department could use additional supervision.

Following an interaction with the solitary silverback Giraneza in February 2015, Maggie left the merged group and began traveling alone. Adult females usually transfer directly between groups because solitary travel leaves them exposed. She continued by herself for roughly a month before crossing into Congo, where the trackers lost her trail. At the campus, I read that final passage and unexpectedly began to cry.

The day had already given me the silverback I had traveled so far to see, the baby turning the forest floor into a playground and the mother eating through the commotion. Maggie reached me differently, her losses and fierce sense of responsibility gathering into a life that felt both touching and worthy of a small, private salute.

The gorilla I never met followed me home

Back in Milan, one browser tab became another until my screen resembled the early stages of either a doctoral thesis or an intervention. Somewhere among them, Maggie clarified a habit I have had for years. I arrive somewhere for the landmark everyone has agreed upon and leave preoccupied by the woman in the footnotes. For a newsletter called Leap by Faith, a gorilla makes an unlikely first subject, and an unusually fitting one.

The silverback remained every bit as magnificent as the documentaries promised. Maggie and the females around him only widened the frame, revealing a social world whose authority reached well beyond its broadest back. That second story, the one waiting just past the official itinerary, is where I keep losing the afternoon.

^{Photograph by Faith Katunga.}

The glasses came home having done their assigned job, and through them I had seen the silverback’s shoulders, the baby’s small hands and the mother unhurried at her meal,. Yet the gorilla who came home with me existed in a photograph on a wall, followed by a trail that disappeared across the Virungas.

---

^{A note on how I got there. Visit Rwanda invited me on this trip and arranged the whole of it, from the gorilla permit to the lodges. The observations, advice and lost glasses are entirely my own.}