- Profile
- Iain Douglas-Hamilton is one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant. He pioneered the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behavior in Tanzania's Lake Manyara National Park at age 23. He received a PhD in Zoology from Oxford University for the work. During the 1970s he investigated the status of elephants throughout Africa and was the first to alert the world to the ivory poaching holocaust. For his work on elephants he was awarded one of conservation's highest awards, the Order of the Golden Ark ,in 1988. He founded Save the Elephants in 1993 in order to create an effective and flexible NGO dedicated specifically to elephants. Iain has assisted numerous media coverages of African elephants by National Geographic, BBC and others. His work was featured in the National Geographic article Samburu Elephants by David Quammen (September 2008 issue).