Our Okavango-Kalahari colleague and tour leader, Dr. Karen Ross attended the UK premiere of "A Life Among Elephants" last week, at the Royal Geographical Society's headquarters in London.  

The film celebrates to work of "Save the Elephants" founder, Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton and his nearly 60-year extraordinary mission to protect wild African elephants.  

Karen Ross, worked closely with him in her formative years when she was carrying out her post-graduate research.   

Karen reported back to us on the event:

"In late November the UK's premiere of 'A Life Among Elephants' was held  at the Royal Geographic Society in London to support the protection of elephants and a fundraiser for the charity Save the Elephants. It was an honour to be part of this special event to celebrate Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton's 60 year mission to protect wild African elephants. It was also a step back in time to the late 1970's and early 1980's when I worked with Iain as he valiantly took on the horrific ivory poaching scourge that was decimating elephants across Africa, and Kenya and Tanzania in particular. Dr. Douglas Hamilton's fight for the protection of elephants culminated in the world's first "ivory burn" in 1989 when the President of Kenya symbolically set light to a 12 ton stockpile of ivory seized during the previous decade of poaching. It was to send a message, not only about the destruction of Kenya's elephants, but also to the causal effect of the rocketing ivory trade, and a desperate measure to take all ivory out of circulation. Less than two months later, on October 17th 1989, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) enforced a worldwide ban on the sale of ivory. Immediately elephant poaching was reduced, and elephant numbers began to stabilise in East Africa. 

Botswana became a safe haven for elephants during this time, and now has the largest population of elephants in the world, numbering over 132,000 elephants and more than half of all of Africa's herd."

See the movie trailer here. 

CNH Tours owner, Marc Patry, had the chance to meet Ian on a couple of occasions when he was working for the UN in Nairobi - "He certainly left an I've-seen-it-all kind of impression on me" he reports. 

 

 Ivory burn in Kenya: The only way to be sure that confiscated ivory doesn't make it into the ivory trade

 

 

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