Our Team

Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, CBE (1942 – 2025)

Founder & Senior Scientist

Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton was one of the world’s foremost authorities on African elephants and a pioneering force in elephant conservation. He carried out the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behaviour in the wild at Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park at just 23, and later received a DPhil in zoology from the University of Oxford. His research transformed our understanding of elephant society and laid the foundations for modern elephant behavioural science.

When the elephants he studied began to be slaughtered for ivory, Iain became a leading advocate for their protection. He was instrumental in exposing the scale of the ivory poaching crisis, documenting the loss of more than half of Africa’s elephants in the decade leading up to the 1989 international ban on ivory trade. In 1993, he founded Save the Elephants to secure a future for wild elephants through science, habitat protection and coexistence with people. His pioneering use of GPS tracking and aerial surveys revolutionised elephant monitoring and became standard conservation tools.