Beyond Safaris: How Anthony Ochieng is Driving Conservation Action in Africa

Award winning wildlife ecologist, educator, conservation photographer and filmmaker – Anthony Ochieng has quite the resume. He describes himself as a conservation visual storyteller with a strong focus on environmental education and when you encounter his work, it all makes sense. 

©Anthony Ochieng Onyango

Whether he is underwater or on land, Anthony captures nature in a way that conveys a powerful and easily overlooked truth – that we are nature. His work dispels the separation of human beings from nature and reminds us that our existence is intricately interwoven with all that surrounds us.

The inspiration behind Anthony’s work can be traced all the way back to his childhood. A visit to Nairobi National Park with his father sparked curiosity around science and wildlife, leading him to pursue wildlife management studies. “Science feeds into these other aspects that you see, being an educator, being a photographer, being a filmmaker, they're all fed from the backbone of being an ecologist.” 

When he was studying wildlife management at university, he noticed there was a gap in what many people understood the purpose of wildlife to be. “When you meet many Africans, they’ll tell you, “oh wildlife is for white people” and I’m like wait a minute, wildlife is not for white people, wildlife is the backbone of both our survival and our environment."

©Anthony Ochieng Onyango

These perspectives reveal a gap in the way wildlife education has been packaged over time and Anthony’s lifetime commitment is bridging that gap. “We need to define wildlife in a different way so that future generations do not see wildlife as a product to consume but as key to our ecosystems and world.”

Early in his career, Anthony worked for the Giraffe Center in Kenya and found joy teaching and sharing knowledge. “I didn't necessarily know that education would be a powerful tool for me to use. But then it really was interesting breaking down information for different age groups.” 

Today, he describes young people as his clients and is always thinking about how to engage them meaningfully in conservation education. “I admired my dad being a teacher and how he delivered information from one person to the other. When it comes to young people, I am always thinking, “How do I teach them? How do I break down? How do I make lesson plans? How do I modify learning?” As the Executive Director and Founder of TonyWild Foundation, Anthony is working with his team to promote conservation action through photography, film and science across schools in Kenya.

©Anthony Ochieng Onyango

But Anthony’s work extends beyond this – a creative at heart, he picked up the camera as an extension of his love for educating. “I spent five years just looking at photobooks, learning as much as I could from other people's images and training my eye.” Anthony’s images and films have now received worldwide recognition and featured in the BBC, National Geographic Espana and Africa, Climate Tracker, Climate Visuals Org and much more.

What stands out about Anthony’s work is how it is anchored in communities. “For a long time, conservation has had a “do not touch” principle, which creates bias because you're keeping it away from people who live with wildlife and then you bring other people to come and enjoy the wildlife itself. People live in these ecosystems. It is like in the Masai Mara or Tsavo or any place where we live with wildlife. So if you separate them, you're not telling the true story.”

©Anthony Ochieng Onyango

He believes that communities are the backbone of conservation efforts and his work intentionally spotlights this. “People have to be at the centre of conservation, without people, there's no conservation. So my stories are people centred rather than beauty centred. You can take an image of a lion and it's like, so what? But then if you put people in between, it makes sense because they are the ones that could spoil it or conserve it.”

A documentary Anthony is currently working on captures this principle beautifully, “I’m working on a short documentary on people living with elephants in Lake Jipe and it's fascinating to see how they have shifted from farming to fishing as their main activity to co-exist with the elephants. They could have just decided to eliminate the wildlife but they are instead finding working solutions, which really speaks to a great level of selflessness.”

Whether he is teaching or filming, Anthony’s work challenges us to not only rethink our approach to nature but to take ownership of the work to preserve it. We are nature and nature is us.