Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton's groundbreaking study of elephant behavior in Tanzania in the 1960's paved the way for elephant research and conservation today. Intrigued by their intelligence, elephant protection became Iain's passion. In chronicling the sharp decline of elephant populations in the 1980's, he was the first to alert the world to the poaching crisis and helped bring about the world ivory trade ban.

With a doctorate in zoology from Oxford, honored with the Netherlands’ prestigious Order of the Golden Ark conservation award, and inducted into the Order of the British Empire in 1993, Iain is respected as one of the world’s principal authorities on the African elephant.  He and his wife Oria have co-authored two award-winning books, Among the Elephants and Battle for the Elephants, and have made numerous films to make the world aware that the largest land mammals are sensitive, aware beings displaying complex levels of consciousness.

Iain founded Save the Elephants in 1993, involving local people in both conservation efforts and research.  As Director of Save the Elephants, Iain is pioneering the development of live tracking technology to monitor and interpret elephant movements.  Iain serves as advisor to the Kenya Wildlife Services and other government conservation agencies.  On the international level, he is a member of the Technical Advisory Group to the CITES Convention on Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants and serves on the Data Review Task Force of IUCN’s African Elephant Specialist Group.

Africa has experienced a continent-wide decline in the number of elephants in the last few decades. Between 1979 and 1989, nearly half of Africa's elephants were killed for ivory. Expansion of human populations increasingly results in conflict between people and elephants. Human settlements limit an elephant's range of movement, while an elephant feasting on crops may destroy a farmer's livelihood and result in fatal retaliation.

As human populations expand in Africa and farmland encroaches upon traditionally game-dominated areas, there has been progressive shrinkage of the vital habitat upon which African elephants depend.  Traditional migratory routes, which once afforded safe passage through wilderness to generations of roaming elephant family groups, now intersect roads and skirt human habitation.  With less natural food available and in closer proximity to farms and ranches, some elephants resort to crop-raiding, usually carried out under cover of darkness.  Because elephants are expert fence breakers and economic losses to small growers can be serious, farmers defending their livelihoods have been responsible for many elephant fatalities.

While unintended elephant-human encounters pose serious threats to elephants, a grave danger to the survival of the species is renewal of the ivory trade.  In the 1970s, Save the Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton was the first to alert the world to the ivory poaching holocaust and helped bring about the world ivory trade ban in 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).  Once this ban went into effect, the decline of elephant numbers in the wild halted and many populations stabilized.  However, recent amendments to the ban jeopardize its continued effectiveness.

CITES recently approved an exception to the international ban, allowing a one-time sale of government-owned ivory by four southern African nations to Japan and China.  (Governments obtain ivory from confiscations, natural mortality and legal culling.)  While proceeds of the sale are to be used exclusively for elephant conservation and local communities, there is concern that it will stimulate the demand for ivory, in particular for ivory jewelry and art objects which are still popular in eastern Asia.  A renewal of the ivory trade would again prove disastrous for Africa’s elephants.

Save the Elephants (STE) is the leader in the pursuit of high-tech conservation solutions which are combined with grassroots knowledge to secure a future for Africa's imperiled elephants. Its programs encourage traditional practices that follow a conservation ethic and involve local people in research and monitoring. By promoting a tolerant relationship between elephants and humans, STE works to secure a place for all in the future.

Since STE was founded in Kenya in 1993, its programs have expanded across the African continent to protect and study elephants in varying ecosystems, from the desert regions of Mali, to the forests of Gabon and Congo, to the savannahs of South Africa.  STE applies cutting-edge research to the implementation of lasting conservation solutions.

Long-Term Monitoring

STE has been monitoring the elephants in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve for over ten years, attaining bedrock data on elephant movements and behavior and investigating the challenges facing elephant society.

An estimated 900 individual elephants live in or pass through the Samburu Reserve in the course of a year.  These include families of elephants, dominated and guided by a matriarch, as well as bulls which tend to travel by themselves or in male groups.  To keep track of these animals, STE uses mnemonic grouping to name each individual and family unit.  Families include the Artists (with individuals such as Goya, Rodan, Matisse and Flaubert), the First Ladies (Eleanor, Martha and Jackie) and the Spice Girls (Rosemary, Basil and Sage), among others. 

STE keeps detailed records on the physical characteristics distinguishing each elephant, and some staff researchers are able to recognize hundreds of individuals on sight.  STE’s monitoring field team collects data on a daily basis.  Looking at changes in group dynamics is a very powerful tool to answer questions faced in the conservation arena and to design effective conservation solutions.  STE’s wealth of scientific findings is shared with the rest of the world through publications and updating of reviews on the internet.

GPS Tracking

Since 1995 STE has been at the forefront of developing live tracking technology to monitor and interpret elephant movements.  Eighty wild elephants have now been outfitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars which communicate with orbiting earth satellites, allowing the devices continuously to determine and transmit the elephant’s location, speed, direction, and time.

Downloading GPS radio-tracking data

With GPS collars, STE researchers are able to receive live information on the movement of individual elephants even from remote locations where intensive study would otherwise be impossible.  Through collaboration with Google, STE is now able to track elephants across Africa using Google Earth on personal computers.  Watching elephant movements in real time across a three dimensional landscape on a computer screen is like flying across the Kenyan bush and spotting elephants from 500 feet in the air.

GPS tracking data gives researchers valuable clues as to elephant motivation.  It helps STE understand why elephants leave protected areas, where they go, and why they sometimes raid people’s crops.  This information is used to develop wise land-use plans that establish protected corridors for elephants and minimize conflict with surrounding communities. 

Elephant Geofencing

Few physical barriers can stand up to a determined bull elephant crossing human settlements.  Electric fences can act as a deterrent, but elephants have devised ingenious tactics to cross them.  STE is combining GPS tracking and computer software technology to develop a much more effective alternative called geofencing. 

Geofencing refers to virtual fence lines drawn within a computer geographic information system.  The geofence may coincide with an actual fence around a property, but no physical structure is required.  The movements of the threatening elephant are monitored by GPS tracking.  When the elephant approaches the farm’s virtual fence boundary, rangers receive immediate notification so that they may intercept the intruder to administer negative reinforcement (such as vehicular traffic with loud noises and bright lights).  Because elephants are highly intelligent, they easily learn and remember which “lines” they are not to cross. 

Kimani the crop-raider

In 2006, STE erected the first-ever virtual fence to deter elephants from trespassing on a ranch in East Africa.  This geofence was first tested on a bull elephant, Kimani, who had developed considerable skill in breaking expensive fences and engaged in several crop-raiding sprees.  Every time Kimani’s collar signaled his approach to the virtual fence line around the property, a vehicle full of rangers was dispatched to chase him off the property.  Kimani learned quickly, and a year later had not returned to crop-raiding.

In Southern Laikipia, eight potential crop-raiding elephants have been fitted with the collars.  STE is developing a program which will allow farmers to register their farm so that the computer server can send text messages to them directly to warn of an approaching elephant.  This will empower farmers to modify the elephant’s behavior to protect their own crops before damage is done, rather than having them wake in the morning to a raided field.

Bees, Trees, and Elephants

When elephants must survive in a limited range, the pressure on trees can become extreme. The average adult elephant consumes 110 tons of forage annually. Their browsing can significantly damage or even destroy trees. Upon hearing stories that African honeybees have been reported to drive off elephants that threaten their hives, Save the Elephants decided to test whether bees could be used to guard trees.

Test plots were set up in an area regularly visited by elephants. Hives were hung from trees to see if they would function as deterrents. The results were encouraging. No tree hung with a hive occupied by bees was touched by elephants. Even trees hung with unoccupied hives suffered reduced browsing damage. In another test, the recorded sounds of disturbed bees were played from a hidden speaker. Nine times out of ten, elephants ran or walked away from a tree emitting recorded bee sounds. One elephant family actually ran across the full width of the Ewaso Ng’iro River to get away from the recorded sounds of disturbed bees.

STE has begun working closely with farming communities who are suffering from severe crop-raiding to construct beehive fences. This simple and low-cost strategy holds promise as an important tool to reduce economic damage from crop-raiding and tree-stripping by elephants, and at the same time produce additional income through the sale of honey. In 2010, STE started an "Elephant-Friendly Honey" program to help farmers get the best price for their honey from beehive fences. The program has great potential to provide jobs, income, honey, and eventually become self-sustaining.

Education Program

STE is committed to supporting education opportunities for the children living around STE’s project area in the Samburu and Buffalo Springs Reserves.  Most of these children come from impoverished pastoralist backgrounds where their families are unable to afford secondary school fees. STE’s Education Program provides these children with education and training opportunities, working closely with local primary schools to select highly motivated students for secondary school scholarships.  Most of the students who have already completed their secondary school education with assistance from the Education Program are now actively involved in conservation and eco-tourism.

Closer to home, STE provides assistance to primary schools in the STE project area, so that all children receive a valuable education, and in particular, that students with high potential to continue on to secondary school are well prepared for this endeavor.  Through the support of generous donors, the Education Program provides resources to local primary schools, such as desks, stationery, bunk beds, stoves and mosquito nets.  Stimulating learning and positive attitudes in local schools is an essential element of developing “elephant awareness” in the coming generation.
 
Support for the Ivory Trade Ban

STE participates in international conferences to advocate for preserving and strengthening the world ivory trade ban.  Agreed to in 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the world ivory trade ban has afforded elephants some protection from poaching but is scheduled to be renegotiated within ten years.  Of additional concern is a recent CITES compromise allowing the one-time sale of government-owned ivory by four southern African nations to Japan and China, which risks stimulating market demand. 

STE gathers and maintains an extensive database of elephant mortality information.  This database serves as an early warning system for changes in poaching intensities and elephant population trends and is the scientific basis for advocacy efforts.  STE shares this information with international bodies which require documentation of the extent of elephant poaching that continues despite the ivory trade ban, as well as other threats to the viability of the species.  STE also conducts research on underground ivory markets which reveals the extent that illegal trade in elephant ivory continues notwithstanding the existing ban.