10/12/2025
Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, one of the real giants in the world of elephants, has sadly passed away. Founder of the groundbreaking research and conservation organisation Save The Elephants, and a driving force in setting up Wildlife Conservation Network as well as Elephant Crisis Fund, he spent his life tirelessly working to ensure that elephants have a place in our future.
I first met Iain Douglas-Hamilton in Samburu, in northern Kenya, many years ago on my first photo assignment for STE. I was of course star-struck. I had read ’Among The Elephants’ when it was first published in the mid 1970s, and the story of his and Oria Douglas-Hamilton’s very rough life out in the bush, and the early years of serious elephant research, was thrilling and hugely inspiring. On some level it probably influenced my decision to leave the corporate world and devote myself to conservation photography in Africa. Meeting Iain in person and talking at length about the threats to elephants from organised ivory poaching, human population growth and habitat loss, as well as a fundamental disconnect between increasingly urban homo sapiens and nature in general, was fascinating, and his strong conviction that we can, and have an obligation to, create a future where humans and elephants co-exist is a legacy to younger generations. A life well lived.
