1 hour agoShareSaveShareSaveOria Douglas-HamiltonBut that work did not always come easy: he was charged at by elephants, almost killed by a swarm of bees and shot at by poachers. In 2010, a flood destroyed his research facility in Kenya and years of work was lost.Despite the hardships, Douglas-Hamilton remained steadfast in his mission to raise awareness of the plight of African elephants, becoming one of the leading voices to alert the world of the ivory poaching crisis, which he described as “an elephant holocaust”.He later campaigned for an international ban on the commercial trade in ivory, and in 1989 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species was signed, an international agreement between governments.After the agreement failed to wipe out the trade completely, Douglas-Hamilton turned his attention to China and the US, the two main markets for ivory. Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-US President Barack Obama agreed to a near-total ban on its import and export in 2015.Douglas-Hamilton established Save the Elephants in 1993, a charity dedicated to safeguarding the animals and deepening human understanding of their behaviour.The organisation’s CEO Frank Pope, who is also his son-in-law, said: “Iain changed the future not just for elephants, but for huge numbers of people across the globe. His courage, determination and rigour inspired everyone he met.”In his own words, Douglas-Hamilton expressed optimism for the future of his life’s work.”I think my greatest hope for the future is that there will be an ethic developed of human-elephant coexistence,” he once said.Iain Douglas-Hamilton is survived by his wife Oria, children Saba and Dudu, and six grandchildren. …
