Farewell to Iain Douglas-Hamilton

Honouring a Pioneer of Elephant Research

We were deeply saddened to hear of the death of a true elephant hero in 2025. Iain Douglas-Hamilton died at his home in Nairobi on the 10th of December aged 83 after dedicating his life to the study of elephant behaviour and tirelessly campaigning for the protection of African elephants for decades.

Iain studied Zoology at University in the UK before moving to Tanzania to begin his lifelong work of researching elephant behaviour and social structure in natural habitats. During this time he began documenting every elephant that he encountered at Lake Manyara National Park, becoming deeply familiar with the area’s herds and even being able to identify individual elephants by their ears alone. His knowledge and understanding of their behaviour in the wild was second to none and the impact he was able to have on elephant conservation was phenomenal.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton spent nearly 60 years studying Africa’s elephants. Photo credit: Oria Douglas-Hamilton

Amongst his many achievements, he played an instrumental role in the banning of the global ivory trade. Iain often risked his own life in order to protect the species which he so dearly loved, even being shot at by poachers in his attempts to save them. Despite his incredible work of managing to negotiate an international ban on the trade of ivory in 1989, the market was still rife, particularly in China and the US. He worked hard to target these nations, eventually finding success in getting Chinese president Xi Jinping and then US president Barack Obama to agree to a near total ban on the import and export of ivory in 2015.

In 1993, Iain founded Save The Elephants, a charity focused on elephant conservation and understanding of elephant behaviour, which still thrives today and recently won the 20th BBVA Foundation Worldwide Award for Biodiversity Conservation. Of the majestic creatures, he once said “I think my greatest hope for the future is that there will be an ethic developed of human-elephant coexistence”.

Iain’s death leaves a huge hole in the fight for elephant survival, however his remarkable work will never be forgotten and he has paved the way for conservationists of the future.

Iain helped drive the 1989 global ivory ban after witnessing devastating population declines in the 1970s and 1980s. Photo credit: Publicity Picture