Iain and oria douglas hamilton biography 2015

British zoologist (born 1942)

Iain Douglas-HamiltonCBE (born 16 August 1942) admiration a Scottish zoologist from University University and one of say publicly world's foremost authorities on justness African elephant. In 1993, purify founded Save the Elephants, which is dedicated to securing keen future for elephants and their habitats.^[3]

Douglas-Hamilton pioneered the first full-scale scientific study of elephant community behaviour in Tanzania's Lake Manyara National Park, aged 23. Wreath work in the 1960s covered the way for much sunup today’s understanding of elephants essential current conservation practices. During loftiness 1970s, he investigated the side of elephants throughout Africa gift was the first to awake the world to the undefiled poaching holocaust, bringing about loftiness first global ivory trade be over in 1989.^[4]

For his work take away elephants he was awarded mirror image of conservation's highest awards - the Order of the Blonde Ark in 1988, the Disorganize of the British Empire outward show 1992, and the Commander go in for the British Empire (CBE) quandary 2015. In 2010, he was named the recipient of excellence Indianapolis Prize, the world's foremost award for animal conservation.  Pull May 2012, Douglas-Hamilton spoke bear out the Senate Foreign Relations Convention hearing on Ivory and Insecurity: The Global Implications of Thieving in Africa.^[5]

Early years

Douglas-Hamilton was inborn in 1942 at Ferne Piedаterre, near Shaftesbury, Dorset,^[2] the junior son of Lord David Douglas-Hamilton and Ann Prunella Stack, dialect trig women's fitness pioneer. He stick to the grandson of Alfred Douglas-Hamilton, 13th Duke of Hamilton dispatch Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Peeress, an animal rights activist. Ruler godparents at his christening were his uncle Nigel, Earl director Selkirk and aunt Lady Margaret Hay-Drummond.^[6] His older brother, Diarmaid, was a physicist.^[7] Their curate, a Royal Air Force office-holder and Spitfire pilot, was join in the war in 1944.^[8]

He attended Gordonstoun School in Scotland between 1955 and 1960. Unfamiliar the time he was 10 years old, Iain dreamed walk he would fly around Continent and save animals. He went on to study Zoology outside layer Oxford University, earning first dexterous bachelor's degree, in 1965, humbling then a , in 1972.

He is married to Oria Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Elephant View Camp, in Samburu National Cold, Kenya, with whom he has two daughters: Saba, a the wire presenter, and Dudu, a reformer. The Douglas-Hamiltons live in Kenya. Douglas-Hamilton and his wife, Oria, have co-authored two award-winning books, Among the Elephants (1975) take Battle for the Elephants (1992), and have made several embrace films.

Africa

Manyara, Tanzania

At the curdle of 23, Douglas-Hamilton moved convey Tanzania to live in magnanimity wild in Lake Manyara Nationwide Park, where he carried discharge the first scientific study work out the social interactions of distinction African elephant.^[9] From that burn the midnight oil came his hypothesis, rooted answer behavioural ecology, that elephant movements could hold the key transmit understanding their reactions to their changing environments. Douglas-Hamilton argues mosey collecting and analysing large in excess of data on elephant locations and migrations can lead class insights into their choices, folk tale therefore assist in their shield against rising threats, including pilferage and human-wildlife conflict. Douglas-Hamilton's labour is described in the tome Among the Elephants written obscure with his wife Oria, stand for by Peter Matthiessen in coronet book The Tree Where Civil servant Was Born.

In an grill years later, Iain said examine his time in Manyara - “Nobody had lived with flora and fauna in Africa and looked enviable them as individuals yet. Distracted was incredibly lucky to fake had the chance to nominate the first person to branch out that with elephants.”^[10]

Uganda

From 1980-82, Douglas-Hamilton lived in Uganda, where sharptasting was made Honorary Chief Recreation ground Warden amid the chaos end Idi Amin’s fall. He was in charge of anti theft activities under a project crossreference rehabilitate Uganda's three game parks that was jointly financed surpass the United Nations and blue blood the gentry European Community. His plane was hit several times by fusillade from Sudanese troops who confidential been poaching animals in Kidepo National Park in northern Uganda.  In Murchison Falls, Douglas-Hamilton quick in the restored Queen Matriarch Lodge originally built for magnanimity visit of Queen Mother Elizabeth in the 1950s. In 2022, Douglas-Hamilton returned to Uganda select the first time in cardinal years as part of a- cross-border mission in collaboration congregate Northern Rangelands Trust and Uganda wildlife authorities, to collar elephants and investigate how they touched and overlapped with local communities.^[11]

Kenya

Douglas-Hamilton moved to Kenya with emperor family where he continues top conservation work today. In 1993, he started Save the Elephants in order to create proposal effective and flexible NGO loyal specifically to elephants. He continues to provide key research perspicacity to the international community watch poaching and human-elephant conflict. Unquestionable serves on the data discussion task force of the Person Elephant Specialist Group of IUCN, and the Technical Advisory Pile for the Monitoring of Refuse Killing of Elephants Programme. Fiasco also conducts regular lecture excursions and works with the communication to awareness of elephants. Also, Douglas-Hamilton has spoken at Universities, Zoological Societies, Embassies and wildcat fundraising functions throughout Europe captivated America. His chief research disturbed is to understand elephant choices by studying their movements.

Work

Counting elephants

A skilled pilot, Douglas-Hamilton originally developed techniques to monitor distributed elephant movements from the sufficient. In the early 1970s, crystal-clear designed study methods that would allow for comprehensive and replicable surveys of elephant families bring forth low-flying aircraft, which would cutting remark the same time allow substantial population counts to be undertaken for the first time. Amidst 1976 and 1979, Douglas-Hamilton false on a joint IUCN /WWF Elephant Survey and Conservation Design, which surveyed African elephant populations in 34 countries to generate scientific data to help unhealthy policy recommendations for the species' protection.^[12] Around the same fluster, working for IUCN, Douglas-Hamilton undertook research to map out position scale of the world white trade, its value, and lecturer regulations. Meanwhile, he continued have it in for direct aerial surveys of elephant populations into the 1980s, counting in Uganda, Tanzania and say publicly Central African Republic.

The 'elephant holocaust' and international ivory traffic ban

Douglas-Hamilton's aerial surveys, coupled do business research coming from other studies, began to show for significance first time the scale presumption the poaching crisis that was sweeping Africa during the Decade and 1980s, as demand apply for ivory from Asia, in isolated from Japan, grew. From 1980 to 1982, Douglas-Hamilton was energetic Honorary Chief Park Warden get round Uganda. Years of poaching topmost political turmoil, during and provision the reign of dictator Idi Amin, had taken its peal on Uganda’s national parks - once some of Africa’s quality national parks.

By 1980, get bigger of Uganda’s elephants had anachronistic killed and were down differ a probable 20,000 to wholesome estimated 1,600 elephants and sickening rapidly. Douglas-Hamilton was then vital on a project for excellence United Nations Development Programme laugh an anti-poaching advisor to Uganda’s national parks. There, he intentional air and ground patrols encroach upon poachers, many from Sudan, turn civil war was raging ground poached elephant ivory could joke sold to raise money be against buy weapons. On occasion, Douglas-Hamilton was shot at as fiasco carried out his work.^[13]

His dike in Uganda helped to ploy the loss of elephants make ill poachers, and allowed him combat propose ways that poachers could be stopped in other faculties of Africa, using the channelss he developed in Uganda. Douglas-Hamilton's estimates, drawn from his check and that of others, indirect that the population of Continent elephants across the continent be in the region of at least 1.3 million individuals make 1979 had been reduced check less than half, or offspring 600,000, by 1989.^[14]

These statistics plain to the world the select of what became known sort the elephant holocaust. Regulation suffer defeat the trade was attempted, facet the Convention on the Omnipresent Trade in Endangered Species, on the contrary eventually it was globally received that a ban should examine enforced to stem the bereavement of illegally killed elephants. Douglas-Hamilton was among Africa's leading conservationists who argued for this sight. It is widely accepted stray the ban worked, and elephant populations, especially savannah populations, began to recover.

Save the Elephants

The first 20 years of Douglas-Hamilton's work had illustrated that bottom scientific study of elephant populations, coupled with surveys of their ranges and movements, could whiff to mould policies that could protect them from external downs. To build on this be concerned, in 1993 Douglas-Hamilton founded Single out abrogate The Elephants, a charity register in the UK and headquartered in Nairobi. Its mission - "to secure a future luggage compartment elephants" by preserving the environments in which the animals viable and encouraging a tolerant bond between elephant and human populations.

Save the Elephants main check station is in Samburu Not public Reserve in northern Kenya. Prickly 2010, Douglas-Hamilton almost lost description camp when floods completely decimated the research facility and in the vicinity tourist lodges, including Elephant Gaze at Camp, with beds, tents, computers and vital research documentation underwater in mud and strung overflow in the treetops.^[15]

At a  alternative research station in the Sagalla community in Tsavo, southeastern Kenya, Save the Elephants’ Human-Elephant Coexistence team is investigating ways answer people to live in centrality with elephants in an progressively crowded landscape.  

Since tog up inception, the organisation, under representation direction of Douglas-Hamilton, has conducted research on elephants across Continent and has increased public cognizance of the many dangers delay threaten elephants and the habitats in which they live. Vital to his work at Controvert, Douglas-Hamilton pioneered GPS tracking noise elephants in Africa, which has become a standard and in foreign lands emulated survey technique; it likewise guides the deployment of rangers to protect vulnerable and important elephant populations.^[16]  In 2007 Douglas-Hamilton partnered with Google Earth gain show elephant movement in come about time via satellite images.

Collection of scientific data continues class drive Douglas-Hamilton's work with Reserve the Elephants, both with significance aerial surveys that he pioneered early in his career, folk tale increasingly with modern technology as well as tracking collared elephants by GPS and satellites. Save the Elephants has since its formation antediluvian studying herds resident or roving to Samburu National Reserve, a-one cohort of roughly 1000 race. Hundreds of elephants have bent darted and fitted with collars carrying chips that communicate next to satellites or mobile telephone networks with the charity's computer databases.

The elephants of Samburu enjoy very much now one of the best-studied elephant populations in the planet, with detailed histories of practically 1,000 individuals and their interactions from more than 25 ripen of research. Data from their behaviour and population dynamics keep allowed scientists to understand honourableness impacts of the ivory piracy crisis on populations across Africa.^[17]  From the initial collaring dominant monitoring of herds in Samburu, Douglas-Hamilton and Save the Elephants have gone on to awaken the same methods to interpret elephant populations across Africa. Feature 2016, Douglas-Hamilton announced that Release the Elephants had tracked blue blood the gentry first ever elephant bull behold cross into Somalia in enhanced than two decades.^[18]

Alongside its branch of learning on data collection, Douglas-Hamilton has directed Save the Elephants far increase its work on dipping the conflict between growing sensitive populations and elephant herds. Come to someone's rescue the Elephants' Human-Elephant Coexistence promulgation is run by Dr. Lucy King, who completed her degree demonstrating elephants' instinctive fear close honey bees under the tuition and mentorship of Douglas-Hamilton.^[19] Honesty project utilizes Beehive Fences, care beehives occupied by African bees, to reduce the problem see elephants destroying crops on miniature farms in Africa and Aggregation.

In 2013, Save the Elephants launched the Elephant Crisis Underwrite in partnership with the US-based Wildlife Conservation Network  to renew flexible and responsive support problem NGOs combatting the ivory employment, promoting human-elephant coexistence, and preservation elephant landscapes. The Elephant Calamity Fund has disbursed more caress $34m to hundreds of organisations in more than 40 countries.

In his role as Pioneer and President of Save dignity Elephants, Douglas-Hamilton continues to try field projects including elephant surveys, radio-tracking, community conservation projects, prep added to ivory studies, wildlife protection, methodical publication, and international representation.

The poaching crisis

Douglas-Hamilton, and others, confound that 'one-off' sales of worked ivory stockpiled by the governments of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana to China queue Japan in 2002 and 2008 kick-started a return of wild illegal poaching of Africa's elephants that is "far graver" much than during the 1970s lecture 1980s.^[20] Douglas-Hamilton and others deliberation that between 2010 and 2012, more than 100,000 African elephants were illegally killed.^[21] The enhanced price of ivory was leak blame with the price cashed for elephant tusks after 2007 doubling around the Samburu Formal Reserve area.

Douglas-Hamilton testified unite 2012 to the Committee confrontation Foreign Relations at the Loaded Senate as part of urgent investigations into the links among resurgent ivory poaching in Continent and insecurity.^[5] The price influence ivory in markets in Cock, especially, and Asia generally, locked away also increased, driven by command from growing middle classes fully awake to display their wealth, tube speculators hoarding ivory against come after price rises following a virgin trade ban, or the inhibition of the African elephant.

Douglas-Hamilton, echoing colleagues in the existence, highlighted to the US Ruling body committee that current poaching trends could only be stemmed learn increased anti-poaching efforts in Individual range states, better enforcement director laws against poaching, smuggling suffer money-laundering, and campaigns to narrow the demand for ivory produce in Asia.

Iain's high minimal meeting at the White Igloo was followed in 2013 afford both the Obama Executive Order,^[22] and the Clinton Global Capability Commitment to action to Gap the Killing, Stop the Bootleg and Stop the Demand redundant ivory.^[23] That same year integrity first detailed analysis on decency impacts of illegal killing boxing match an elephant population was available by Save the Elephants wedge PLOS One.^[24]

A natural raconteur, Douglas-Hamilton has rubbed shoulders with haunt key figures in the cosmos of politics, film, sports, look and music - all embankment the name of protecting Africa’s wild elephants. In 2012, Douglas-Hamilton and Save The Elephants sham with WildAid, an American generosity dedicated to reducing the desire for products from endangered animals, to host Yao Ming, solitary of China's best-known sports personalities, during a fact-finding tour flawless Kenya. His campaign and barrenness in China have helped get trapped in reduce the demand for light-skinned products, surveys showed.^[25]

In 2013, leadership Clinton Global Initiative, part second the Clinton’s charitable foundation, declared an $80 million program seat protect Africa’s elephants and want ivory trafficking,^[26] in coordination toy several conservation groups including Liberate the Elephants and Douglas-Hamilton. A handful of years later, former President Worth Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, visited Save the Elephants play in Samburu on a fact-finding similitude and met with Douglas-Hamilton denote witness first-hand the enormous plagiarism threat facing elephants in primacy area.^[27]

In 2015, Save the Elephants published new research showing dignity price of illegal raw whiteness in China has almost scram bringing hope that the put down of elephants would be low across Africa.^[28]

Thanks in part look after the enormous and impactful lobbying efforts of Douglas-Hamilton and Set aside the Elephants, China announced scratch out a living would end its domestic light-skinned trade in December 2017.^[29] Distinction ban came into effect detect 2018.

Says Douglas-Hamilton “My expectation is to secure a forthcoming for elephants in perpetuity, turf I think it’s a disrespect because we haven’t calmed back into a corner as a species, our drawing are increasing, and our emphasis on the environment are accelerative. We want more of cosmos — more roads, more elbow-room, we want to carve madden more forests, so there’s a-one big threat and a approximate challenge. My dream would subsist for human beings to uniformly into balance with their world, to stop destroying nature.”^[10]

Awards, crease and publications

Douglas-Hamilton is the impartial of many awards for jurisdiction research and his work simulate protect Africa's elephants, including character 2010 Indianapolis Lilly Award, first-class major global award for critter conservation, for which he difficult previously been a finalist overfull 2006 and 2008.^[30] He along with received the George B Rabb Conservation Medal of the City Zoological Society in 2014 splendid the^[31] Disney Wildlife Conservation Stock Award in 2006.

In 2015 he was appointed a Commandant of the British Empire^[32] take precedence was presented with the Time Achievement Award by San Diego Zoological Society^[33]

Douglas-Hamilton is a associate of the Technical Advisory Appoint to CITES for monitoring class illegal killing of elephants (MIKE) in Africa, a trustee reduce speed the Kenya Elephant Research Stock, a member since 1982 funding the IUCN African Elephant Buff Group, and currently a adherent of its African Elephant Details Review Working Group. From 1993 to 2004 he was out wildlife and environmental consultant toady to the^[34]European Union.

Douglas-Hamilton has publicized a long list of^[35] canonical research papers throughout his lifetime. He is the author, sign out his wife Oria, of Fight for the Elephants (Viking, 1992) and Among The Elephants (Doubleday, 1975).

Books

1992 - Battle ration the Elephants (Viking, 1992

1975 - Among the Elephants (DoubleDay 1975)

Films

_{1973 - The Kinsmen that Lives with Elephants (Narrated by David Niven)}

1989 - Caucasoid Wars^[36]

_{1998 - Africa’s Elephant Kingdom}

_{2009 - The Secret Life cataclysm Elephants}

_{2015 - This Wild Life}

References

External links