Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the celebrated Scottish zoologist and pioneering elephant researcher who founded Save the Elephants, has died in Nairobi at the age of 83.
Douglas-Hamilton spent decades studying African elephants, exposing the devastating effects of poaching, and campaigning for the international ban on the ivory trade. He was the founder of Save the Elephants in 1993. He became a world-leading expert on elephant behaviour, documenting herds so closely that he could identify individuals by their ears and wrinkles.
Despite facing life-threatening challenges from wildlife, poachers, and natural disasters, he remained committed to raising awareness of the ivory crisis and promoting human-elephant coexistence. He is survived by his wife Oria, children Saba and Dudu, and six grandchildren.
Surveying elephants across Africa has been a challenging and sporadic effort due to logistical difficulties, civil unrest, and funding constraints. However, a new study compiling data from 1,325 surveys over 50 years has revealed a dramatic decline in elephant populations, writes George Wittemyer for The Conversation Africa.
African savanna elephants have declined by 70%, while forest
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Elephant researchers have found evidence that elephants use unique rumbling calls to address specific individuals, similar to human names, writes Mickey Pardo for The Conversation Africa.
Biologists in the study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, used machine learning to detect naming in a sound library from Kenya's Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park. The
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