![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/David-McGowan.jpg\")
David McGowan<\/p>\n– Advertisement –<\/p>\n
A Chicago filmmaker decided to create a classroom in Africa, where he shares his knowledge and insight with wildlife conservationists in Rwanda and Uganda.<\/p>\n
The images they\u2019ve captured are wonderful; the gaze of a gorilla, a hidden herd of hippos. But the people behind the cameras are not professionals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the people on the front lines of wildlife management,\u201d said filmmaker David McGowan. \u201cThey\u2019ll see things other people won\u2019t see because they\u2019re there all the time, and it\u2019s only fair \u2013 they want to have a voice in the discussion too.\u201d<\/p>\n
David McGowan<\/p>\n
As much as a voice, McGowen wanted them to have \u201cthe eyes,\u201d the camera gear to tell their stories. So in 2022 he decided to go to Rwanda, bringing them the equipment they needed and teach them himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt worked like a charm. The people who took the class were rangers, trackers and guides. They got it right away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The idea began in 2007 when McGowan was in Uganda. A veterinarian he was working with told him a story: a silverback gorilla he was watching died, which wasn\u2019t unusual. What happened after that was.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe body was surrounded by juveniles and females in an unmistakable mourning rite,\u201d McGowan recalled. \u201cHe had never seen that. He went to his colleagues, and they had never seen that. He went back to the literature \u2013 nothing. He said, \u2018If I had a camera and knew how to use it, that would have been international news and a boon to science.’\u201d<\/p>\n
It took several years, but McGowan bought everything budding filmmakers would need; most of it with his own money.<\/p>\n
He headed to Africa, where he taught a month-long course to rangers and guides, the people who drive the wildlife tourism industry but had never documented what they see every day in their backyard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like this is working,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is exactly what we want to do. We want them to have the tools and the skills to offer their voices about what are the solutions to keeping wildlife wild.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGowan\u2019s students have already produced several short documentaries they share online, about everything from wildlife conservation to human, animal and environmental health. And their teacher is never far away; every Monday, McGowan gets on a Zoom call to encourage his students and answer any questions they have.<\/p>\n
One of the film projects his students in Rwanda asked to do focused o how locals were learning to create handmade paper from banana plants, a full-circle moment because McGowan was nominated for an Academy Award in 1992 for his documentary on an Indiana couple who create handmade paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what to make of it, it\u2019s like serendipity,\u201d McGowan said.<\/p>\n
Life, indeed, has a way of opening doors, many of them unexpected, like an opportunity to learn, fulfill dreams, protect and document a way of life for generations to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m training people to feel like I do,\u201d said McGowan. \u201cThey\u2019re as passionate about conservation as I am. I know I have allies on other continents. I know there\u2019s a cohort who will continue to do what I did with my career.\u201d<\/p>\n
By\u00a0Joe Donlon and Edie Kasten (CBS News)<\/p>\n