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Background

One dark night as I sat reviewing video dubs of footage at a campsite deep in the forests of Odzala National Park, I realized that the camp had gone unusually quiet around me. I was used to the nonstop chatter of our African trackers and assistants. I turned to find the men lined up and intently watching the material of gorillas, elephants and buffalo that we had filmed the previous month. They had a great many questions, and wanted to see more. Although their expertise and help was essential to the success of my film productions, they rarely got to see the finished product or the material we worked so hard to capture on a daily basis. They explained to me that they had not seen the details they were seeing now and more importantly they began to understand some of the requests that we made -- in order to capture this footage -- more clearly.

A few weeks later, I was at the Lossi Gorilla Research Sanctuary where Dr. Magdalena Bermejo and German Illera set up a television to show the members of their small village footage of the gorillas they and their trackers went into the forest to study each day. Many of the women and children had not seen gorillas before though their homes were located in the middle of the territory a group of twenty-two groillas led by the Silver Back Apollo also called home. It soon became obvious as they familiarized themselves with the different members of Apollo’s group that they felt a connection with the gorilla, which motivated them to help protect them.

INCEF'S MISSON       1 – To promote conservation, research, education and health by producing and disseminating videos and educational materials to indigenous people worldwide. 2 – Within that mission, is the hope that knowledge will help prevent the transmission of zoonotic diseases and curtail the commercial trade in bushmeat that helps spread pathogens between species including humans. 3 – And to engage in scientific evaluation of the effects of these videos and materials on the lives and well-being of the indigenous populations they are made for.

On future trips, I brought tapes of not only the films I had made, but also other wildlife films. I held screenings using a solar powered television set. Attendance was always high and for one particular screening villagers walked 30 kilometers to come and watch the films. However, these films were in English or on rare occasions French and not everyone could understand them. If I expected to get conservation messages out, I wasn’t going to do it by showing films that most of the audience couldn’t understand. When the Ebola epidemic broke out at Lossi (see Gorillas in the Hot Zone) in November of 2002 a number of news reports and films were made for audiences in the United States and Europe. None of these films were shown to, or focused toward the local populations. We were missing the most important audience if we wanted to stem the spread of Ebola. What were we doing to educate the people who actually were responsible for and lived in the habitats where we filmed?

It was time to change my audience and I began the International Conservation and Education Fund. As I take on this mission, my hope is to produce videos that will be about, and understood by indigenous audiences and the issues that impact their daily lives, whether it is about the wildlife they share their world with, or emerging viruses that can be spread across species.