Iain Douglas-Hamilton CBE (born 16 August 1942) is a Scottish zoologist from Oxford University and one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant.

[3] Douglas-Hamilton pioneered the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behaviour in Tanzania's Lake Manyara National Park, aged 23.

In May 2012, Douglas-Hamilton spoke at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Ivory and Insecurity: The Global Implications of Poaching in Africa.

He is married to Oria Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Elephant Watch Camp, in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, with whom he has two daughters: Saba, a television presenter, and Dudu, a conservationist.

At the age of 23, Douglas-Hamilton moved to Tanzania to live in the wild in Lake Manyara National Park, where he carried out the first scientific study of the social interactions of the African elephant.

[9] From that study came his hypothesis, rooted in behavioural ecology, that elephant movements could hold the key to understanding their reactions to their changing environments.

Douglas-Hamilton argues that collecting and analysing large amounts of data on elephant locations and migrations can lead to insights into their choices, and therefore assist in their protection against rising threats, including poaching and human-wildlife conflict.

I was incredibly lucky to have had the chance to be the first person to do that with elephants.”[10] From 1980-82, Douglas-Hamilton lived in Uganda, where he was made Honorary Chief Park Warden amid the chaos after Idi Amin’s fall.

He was in charge of anti poaching activities under a project to rehabilitate Uganda's three game parks that was jointly financed by the United Nations and the European Community.

His plane was hit several times by gunfire from Sudanese troops who had been poaching animals in Kidepo National Park in northern Uganda.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Douglas-Hamilton testified in 2012 to the Committee on Foreign Relations at the US Senate as part of high-level investigations into the links between resurgent ivory poaching in Africa and insecurity.

[24] A natural raconteur, Douglas-Hamilton has rubbed shoulders with many key figures in the world of politics, film, sports, fashion and music - all in the name of protecting Africa’s wild elephants.

In 2012, Douglas-Hamilton and Save The Elephants worked with WildAid, an American charity dedicated to reducing the demand for products from endangered animals, to host Yao Ming, one of China's best-known sports personalities, during a fact-finding tour of Kenya.

[28] Thanks in part to the enormous and impactful lobbying efforts of Douglas-Hamilton and Save the Elephants, China announced it would end its domestic ivory trade in December 2017.

Directed by Nigel Pope, with Jackie Savery and Justin Purefoy as executive producers, and an evocative score by Glasgow-based composer Fraser Purdie, the film is proudly supported by Save the Elephants.