36 Facts About Iain Douglas-Hamilton

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was born on 16 August 1942 and is a Scottish zoologist from Oxford University and one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was born in 1942 at Ferne House, near Shaftesbury, Dorset, the younger son of Lord David Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Ann Prunella Stack, a women's fitness pioneer.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton is the grandson of Alfred Douglas-Hamilton, 13th Duke of Hamilton and Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, an animal rights activist.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton attended Gordonstoun School in Scotland between 1955 and 1960.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton is married to Oria Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Elephant Watch Camp, in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, with whom he has two daughters: Saba, a television presenter, and Dudu, a conservationist.

At the age of 23, Iain Douglas-Hamilton moved to Tanzania to live in the wild in Lake Manyara National Park, where he carried out the first scientific study of the social interactions of the African elephant.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton argues that collecting and analysing large amounts of data on elephant locations and migrations can lead to insights into their choices, and therefore assist in their protection against rising threats, including poaching and human-wildlife conflict.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton's work is described in the book Among the Elephants written together with his wife Oria, and by Peter Matthiessen in his book The Tree Where Man Was Born.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was in charge of anti poaching activities under a project to rehabilitate Uganda's three game parks that was jointly financed by the United Nations and the European Community.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton's plane was hit several times by gunfire from Sudanese troops who had been poaching animals in Kidepo National Park in northern Uganda.

In 2022, Iain Douglas-Hamilton returned to Uganda for the first time in forty years as part of a cross-border mission in collaboration with Northern Rangelands Trust and Uganda wildlife authorities, to collar elephants and investigate how they moved and overlapped with local communities.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton moved to Kenya with his family where he continues his conservation work today.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton continues to provide key research findings to the international community about poaching and human-elephant conflict.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton serves on the data review task force of the African Elephant Specialist Group of IUCN, and the Technical Advisory Group for the Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants Programme.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton conducts regular lecture tours and works with the media to awareness of elephants.

Additionally, Iain Douglas-Hamilton has spoken at Universities, Zoological Societies, Embassies and private fundraising functions throughout Europe and America.

Around the same time, working for IUCN, Iain Douglas-Hamilton undertook research to map out the scale of the world ivory trade, its value, and its regulations.

From 1980 to 1982, Iain Douglas-Hamilton was made Honorary Chief Park Warden in Uganda.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was then working on a project for the United Nations Development Programme as an anti-poaching advisor to Uganda's national parks.

On occasion, Iain Douglas-Hamilton was shot at as he carried out his work.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton was among Africa's leading conservationists who argued for this position.

The first 20 years of Iain Douglas-Hamilton's work had illustrated that close scientific study of elephant populations, coupled with surveys of their ranges and movements, could help to mould policies that could protect them from external changes.

In 2010, Iain Douglas-Hamilton almost lost the camp when floods completely decimated the research facility and nearby tourist lodges, including Elephant Watch Camp, with beds, tents, computers and vital research documentation submerged in mud and strung up in the treetops.

Since its inception, the organisation, under the direction of Iain Douglas-Hamilton, has conducted research on elephants across Africa and has increased public awareness of the many dangers that threaten elephants and the habitats in which they live.

Fundamental to his work at STE, Iain Douglas-Hamilton pioneered GPS tracking of elephants in Africa, which has become a standard and widely emulated survey technique; it guides the deployment of rangers to protect vulnerable and key elephant populations.

In 2016, Iain Douglas-Hamilton announced that Save the Elephants had tracked the first ever elephant bull to cross into Somalia in more than two decades.

Alongside its focus on data collection, Iain Douglas-Hamilton has directed Save the Elephants to increase its work on reducing the conflict between growing human populations and elephant herds.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton testified in 2012 to the Committee on Foreign Relations at the US Senate as part of high-level investigations into the links between resurgent ivory poaching in Africa and insecurity.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, echoing colleagues in the field, highlighted to the US Senate committee that current poaching trends could only be stemmed with increased anti-poaching efforts in African range states, better enforcement of laws against poaching, smuggling and money-laundering, and campaigns to reduce the demand for ivory products in Asia.

In 2012, Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Save The Elephants worked with WildAid, an American charity dedicated to reducing the demand for products from endangered animals, to host Yao Ming, one of China's best-known sports personalities, during a fact-finding tour of Kenya.

Thanks in part to the enormous and impactful lobbying efforts of Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Save the Elephants, China announced it would end its domestic ivory trade in December 2017.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton is the recipient of many awards for his research and his work to protect Africa's elephants, including the 2010 Indianapolis Prize, a major global award for animal conservation, for which he had previously been a finalist in 2006 and 2008.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton received the George B Rabb Conservation Medal of the Chicago Zoological Society in 2014 and the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund Award in 2006.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton is a member of the Technical Advisory Group to CITES for monitoring the illegal killing of elephants in Africa, a trustee of the Kenya Elephant Research Fund, a member since 1982 of the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group, and currently a member of its African Elephant Data Review Working Group.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton has published a long list of academic research papers throughout his career.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton is the author, with his wife Oria, of Battle for the Elephants and Among The Elephants.