Goldsmith’s Gorillas
By Ian Nicholas, School of Liberal Arts
“Oh my God,” someone whispered. Involuntary murmurs of disgust fill Walker Auditorium as the slideshow advanced. Protecting Primates Up on the screen, projected larger than life, a series of photos showed a dismembered gorilDr. Michele Goldsmith’s research focuses on la, her head sitting incongruously on a dinner how ecotourism in Uganda is affecting plate, a distant look in her eyes. This was the embattled mountain gorilla. supposed to be just a light lecture in which 12 | The Extra Mile | Spring 2009
the new professor at SNHU would introduce herself and her work to the university. “I’m sorry,” Dr. Michele Goldsmith said, not sounding sorry at all. “This is reality.” The reality to which Goldsmith referred is poaching, just one of several modern threats to the dwindling population of the wild gorilla, an animal strikingly similar to