Iain Douglas-Hamilton CBE Image Credit: Indianopolis Zoo
It is with great sadness and profound respect that we pay tribute to Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who passed away last night at the age of 83. Iain was a world-renowned expert on elephants and a leading light of conservation in East Africa. He was also one of Tusk’s earliest Ambassadors, helping guide our initial conservation strategy and supporting our endeavours.
Iain began his career in the 1960’s, researching elephant social behaviour in Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park. He referred to that time as “a golden age for elephants”, and in the following decade, while investigating the status of elephants throughout Africa, he was among the first to alert the world to the ivory poaching crisis.
Iain was a leading voice calling for the international ban on trade in ivory, which was passed by CITES in 1989, and in 1993 he established Save the Elephants, specialising in their research and protection.
As a Tusk Ambassador, Iain often lent his weight to our cause too. In November 2011, together with Tico McNutt of the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust, Iain delivered the annual Tusk Conservation Lecture on how technology was transforming wildlife conservation in Africa. Already by then, through a combination of Google Earth, GPS and SMS texting, Iain’s team of researchers was able to guide conservationists on how to improve protection for Kenya’s elephant herds and reduce conflict with communities; work that continues to this day.
A few years later, in May 2014, Iain presented the second Christie’s Conservation Lecture in aid of Tusk. Speaking to a sell-out audience, Iain spoke on the theme of “Hope for Elephants in a Time of Danger”. The evening was held in support of a joint project between Tusk and Save the Elephants to provide tracking collars for the elephants of northern Kenya, and in memory of the famous tusker ‘Mountain Bull’, who had been killed earlier that month.
Iain was without doubt the pre-eminent scientist working on elephants and I will always be immensely grateful to him for his willingness to collaborate with Tusk and lend his invaluable expertise. The world has lost a true conservation legend today, but his extraordinary legacy will continue.”
Charlie Mayhew OBE, Founder & President of Tusk
Iain’s impact and achievements earned him many awards and accolades, including an OBE from Her Late Majesty The Queen in 1992, and CBE in 2015. Iain’s depth of knowledge and experience with elephants was second to none, and is a great loss to Africa and the conservation community. Nevertheless, his legacy lives on through the team he has built and inspired at Save the Elephants. Iain will be greatly missed, and we send our deepest condolences to his wife Oria, his daughters Saba and Dudu, and all the team at Save the Elephants.
