Richard Carroll (right) photo: WWF

So what do you do when you come face-to-face with a 400-pound silverback gorilla? Ask Dr. Richard Carroll, WWF's Managing Director for the Congo Basin, who knows the answer firsthand. Carroll's extensive field work deep within the jungle forests has raised awareness of the threats facing this endangered species and helped to establish WWF's lowland gorilla conservation strategy.

Video Clips   * Below are video clips of an interview with Richard Carroll. Q: What first took you to Africa and what made you stay? Q: How did you start working with gorillas? Q: What's it like to work with gorillas in the field? Q: What do you do when you come face-to-face with a 400-pound silverback gorilla? Q: What is it like working in the field?

Dubbed "The Silverback Gorilla" for his trademark tanned leathery skin and bushy gray beard and hair, Carroll has over two decades of experience venturing into the Congo Basin's dense, mystical rainforests and can claim credit for some of that region's most exciting success stories.

In 1980 as a Peace Corps volunteer, he made his first journey into the dense lowland tropical forests of the Central African Republic. His observations of chimpanzees, gorillas, forest elephants and bongo taught him several valuable lessons, such as "When you are in close proximity to a 400-pound silverback gorilla who is pulling down vines and screaming," he notes, "you have to crouch down and act like a monkey to try to convince the gorilla you're just another ape species."

Carroll observed firsthand some of the forces threatening those species' survival: uncontrolled logging, population and agricultural encroachment, mining and poaching. The root causes of these threats became clear when he returned to the area four years later to study gorillas and elephants. He worked with the BaAka people, indigenous hunter-gatherers often called pygmies. Although the BaAka possessed unsurpassed knowledge and appreciation of the region's forests, they found their cultural traditions increasingly challenged by migrant workers who came to the region for logging. The BaAka saw an opportunity to use their forest resources to finance medical care, education and other benefits of modern society, but they didn't want to lose their forests and wildlife.

Carroll set about fashioning a program that would help them protect their heritage while allowing limited development in such areas as selective logging and tourism. With the creation of the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Special Reserve and the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park, almost 1,750 square miles of moist tropical forests were protected, and the local people enjoy the benefits of environmental education, health and family planning, agroforestry and small income-generating enterprises like honey collection.

All of this has benefited the wildlife populations, especially the gorillas, some of which are being habituated to human observers as a way of generating tourism income. Elephants have benefited from improved enforcement of anti-poaching laws, and WWF is also working with locals to install electrified fences to protect crops from elephants. All of these ideas have spread throughout the region, such that new and old reserves are now linked in many places, providing vital corridors to ensure that central Africa's rare and unique wildlife and habitats are protected for future generations to enjoy.