Counting elephants A skilled pilot, Douglas-Hamilton initially developed techniques to monitor widespread elephant movements from the air. In the early 1970s, he designed study methods that would allow for comprehensive and replicable surveys of elephant families from low-flying aircraft, which would at the same time allow large population counts to be undertaken for the first time. Between 1976 and 1979, Douglas-Hamilton worked on a joint
IUCN /
WWF Elephant Survey and Conservation Programme, which surveyed African elephant populations in 34 countries to produce scientific data to help shape policy recommendations for the species' protection. Around the same time, working for IUCN, Douglas-Hamilton undertook research to map out the scale of the world
ivory trade, its value, and its regulations. Meanwhile, he continued to direct aerial surveys of elephant populations into the 1980s, including in Uganda, Tanzania and the Central African Republic.
The 'elephant holocaust' and international ivory trade ban Douglas-Hamilton's aerial surveys, coupled with research coming from other studies, began to show for the first time the scale of the poaching crisis that was sweeping Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, as demand for ivory from Asia, in particular from Japan, grew. From 1980 to 1982, Douglas-Hamilton was made Honorary Chief Park Warden in Uganda. Years of poaching and political turmoil, during and after the reign of dictator Idi Amin, had taken its toll on Uganda's national parks – once some of Africa's finest national parks. By 1980, most of Uganda's elephants had been killed and were down from a probable 20,000 to an estimated 1,600 elephants and declining rapidly. Douglas-Hamilton was then working on a project for the
United Nations Development Programme as an anti-poaching advisor to Uganda's national parks. There, he designed air and ground patrols against poachers, many from Sudan, where civil war was raging and poached elephant ivory could be sold to raise money to buy weapons. On occasion, Douglas-Hamilton was shot at as he carried out his work. His work in Uganda helped to stem the loss of elephants to poachers, and allowed him to propose ways that poachers could be stopped in other parts of Africa, using the methods he developed in Uganda. Douglas-Hamilton's estimates, drawn from his research and that of others, suggested that the population of African elephants across the continent of at least 1.3 million individuals in 1979 had been reduced to less than half, or around 600,000, by 1989. These statistics illustrated to the world the scale of what became known as the elephant holocaust. Regulation of the trade was attempted, via the
Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, but eventually it was globally accepted that a
ban should be enforced to stem the loss of illegally killed elephants. Douglas-Hamilton was among Africa's leading conservationists who argued for this position. It is widely accepted that the ban worked, and elephant populations, especially savannah populations, began to recover.
Save the Elephants The first 20 years of 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. To build on this work, in 1993, Douglas-Hamilton founded
Save The Elephants, a charity registered in the UK and headquartered in
Nairobi. Its mission – "to secure a future for elephants" by preserving the environments in which the animals live and encouraging a tolerant relationship between elephant and human populations. Save the Elephants main research station is in
Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya. In 2010, 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. At a second research station in the Sagalla community in
Tsavo, southeastern Kenya, the Human-Elephant Coexistence team is investigating ways for people to live in harmony with elephants in an increasingly crowded landscape. Since its inception, the organisation, under the direction of 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, Douglas-Hamilton pioneered GPS tracking of elephants in Africa, which has become a standard and widely emulated survey technique; it also guides the deployment of rangers to protect vulnerable and key elephant populations. In 2007 Douglas-Hamilton partnered with
Google Earth to show elephant movement in real time via satellite images. Collection of scientific data continues to drive Douglas-Hamilton's work with Save the Elephants, both with the aerial surveys that he pioneered early in his career, and increasingly with modern technology including tracking collared elephants by
GPS and satellites. Save the Elephants has since its formation been studying herds resident or migratory to Samburu National Reserve, a cohort of roughly 1000 individuals. Hundreds of elephants have been darted and fitted with collars carrying chips that communicate via satellites or mobile telephone networks with the charity's computer databases. The elephants of Samburu are now one of the best-studied elephant populations in the world, with detailed histories of almost 1,000 individuals and their interactions from more than 25 years of research. Data from their behaviour and population dynamics have allowed scientists to understand the impacts of the ivory poaching crisis on populations across Africa. From the initial collaring and monitoring of herds in Samburu, Douglas-Hamilton and Save the Elephants have gone on to use the same methods to study elephant populations across Africa. In 2016, 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, Douglas-Hamilton has directed Save the Elephants to increase its work on reducing the conflict between growing human populations and elephant herds. Its Human-Elephant Coexistence program is run by Dr. Lucy King, who completed her doctorate demonstrating elephants' instinctive fear of honey bees under the guidance and mentorship of Douglas-Hamilton. The project utilises
beehive fences, with
beehives occupied by
African bees, to reduce the problem of elephants destroying crops on small farms in Africa and Asia. In 2013, Save the Elephants launched the Elephant Crisis Fund in partnership with the US-based
Wildlife Conservation Network to provide flexible and responsive support to NGOs combatting the ivory trade, promoting human-elephant coexistence, and protecting elephant landscapes. The Elephant Crisis Fund has disbursed more than $36m to hundreds of organisations in more than 40 countries. In his role as founder and president of Save the Elephants, Douglas-Hamilton ran field projects including elephant surveys, radio-tracking, community conservation projects, and ivory studies, wildlife protection, scientific publication, and international representation. ==The poaching crisis==