Fewer than 1,100 mountain gorillas remain on Earth, and one-third live in the Virunga volcanic chain that frames Rwanda's northern border. Volcanoes National Park protects 160 square kilometers of cloud forest, bamboo thickets, and alpine meadows between 2,400 and 4,507 meters, habitat for twelve habituated gorilla families that researchers and rangers have spent decades acclimating to human presence. Dian Fossey established her Karisoke Research Center on the saddle between Karisimbi and Visoke in 1967, and her 18-year census laid the scientific foundation for the conservation model Rwanda deploys today. The park's revenue-sharing program channels fifteen percent of permit fees directly to village cooperatives, funding schools, clinics, and cooperatives that give local communities a stake in gorilla survival. Gorilla trekking Rwanda packages anchor around the $1,500 permit, a price set by the Rwanda Development Board to balance conservation funding with controlled visitation. Each permit covers park entry, an armed ranger escort, a specialist tracker, and exactly one hour with a gorilla family once contact is made. Eight visitors trek to each family daily, and permits sell out months ahead during June through September and December through February. The trek itself ranges from 30 minutes to six hours depending on where the family foraged the previous night, and altitude, mud, and stinging nettles demand fitness and resolve. Porters hired at the Kinigi briefing point carry daypacks and provide a steadying hand on steep volcanic soil. The Virunga range holds five of the eight volcanoes that straddle Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Karisimbi, at 4,507 meters, is the highest and requires a two-day climb. Bisoke, Sabyinyo, Gahinga, and Muhabura form the park's eastern wall, their craters visible from the terraced fields around Musanze. The Volcanoes National Park became Rwanda's first protected area in 1925, initially as a sanctuary for the mountain gorillas Belgian colonists feared would vanish under hunting pressure. Today the park employs more than 600 trackers, guides, and anti-poaching patrols, and gorilla numbers have climbed every year since 2008. Fossey's grave lies in the forest beside the gorillas she studied, a three-hour hike from the park boundary, and visitors walking that trail pass the same giant lobelias and hagenia trees she described in her field notes half a century ago.