Born in Kenya, the hub of colonial East Africa in the
1930s, Oria Douglas-Hamilton's story started with a romance set in
another era.
Her mother, Giselle Banau-Varilla, was a French
sculptress who trained under Rodin and her father, Mario Rocco, an
Italian cavalry officer who had been a pilot during the 1914-18 War.
Falling in love at first sight at a recital in Paris, they eloped to New
York. Then a dizzying trail led them, on the advice of a baron, to the
then Belgian Congo in 1928 to seek their fortune - shooting elephants
for ivory.
After a gruelling year-long foot safari, Giselle
became pregnant and the couple headed to Kenya to find a hospital. They
stayed, joined the expatriate crowd and spent their days playing polo,
flying, hunting and attending cocktail parties.
Their Lake
Naivasha estate grew to produce some of the finest veal and lamb in
Kenya. At its heart was Sirocco House - its architecture inspired by a
West African palace, its interiors dotted with glass and silverware from
Paris, and Giselle's striking African warrior sculptures - where Oria
grew up.
In 1969, she met Scottish zoologist
Iain Douglas-Hamilton. Just 26, he
was living in the jungle in the Lake Manyara area of Tanzania,
conducting the first in-depth study of elephant behaviour and ecology,
for his D Phil in zoology from Oxford University. After a whirlwind
courtship she married him, and joined him in Tanzania.
All Oria
knew about elephants was from her parent's hunting tales and the
children's book Babar the Elephant - which was written by her mother's
cousin. But meeting Iain turned her life around, as she became
passionate about preserving them. "Was it their size, their power, or
their gentleness that attracted me? I could not tell," she writes in
Among the Elephants, a book about their time in Tanzania which became an
Anglia TV film. "I just knew that I loved being surrounded by
elephants."
Iain and Oria's two daughters,
Saba and
Dudu, were born in Tanzania in
1970 and 1971 respectively. Unsurprisingly, after a childhood spent with
elephants, both have joined their parents' conservation efforts. Saba is
a wildlife presenter for the BBC and Dudu produces films on wildlife and
extreme climates.
But although family life may have been idyllic
for the Douglas-Hamilton's, elephant slaughter at that time was reaching
unprecedented levels. Battle for the Elephants, the second book they
wrote together, tells of how they risked their lives to save the
elephants - both in bloody skirmishes with poachers and in attempts to
anaesthetise belligerent elephants to fix radio collars.
They
emerged victorious, however, having helped to bring about the world
ivory ban, imposed in 1989. Iain is now recognised as the foremost
expert on the African elephant and has been honoured with many awards,
including an OBE in 1993.
But closest to his heart is the charity
he established in 1993, Save the Elephants. Using a cutting edge GPS
tracking system, he is leading research into the movement of 750 of the
2,000-strong elephant population in the Samburu area.
Meanwhile
Oria renovated Sirocco House, turning it into a luxurious, and very
'in', guesthouse. More recently, up-river from Iain's research centre,
she has created the Elephant Watch Safari Camp - the only place in
Africa where you can be introduced to elephants and learn about their
lives.
Wildlife conservationist Oria Douglas-Hamilton is a
trustee of Save the Elephants, a charity based in Samburu National
Reserve in the Great Rift Valley, Kenya. Save the Elephants carries out
rigorous studies of elephants, including elephant collaring and
sophisticated elephant-tracking techniques. Through the charity, she has
worked to support, protect, and increase awareness of issues that
threaten African elephant populations and their habitats.
Oria
and her husband Iain Douglas-Hamilton co-authored two award-winning
books, Among the Elephants and Battle for the Elephants, and have made
numerous television films. Douglas-Hamilton has appeared in a number of
wildlife documentaries, including a three-part BBC documentary, The
Secret Life of Elephants, which explored the lives of elephants in
Samburu reserve and the work of the Save the Elephants' research team.
Oria and Iain also co-wrote "African Elephants: Can They Survive?" in
the November 1980 issue of National Geographic, which documented the
havoc caused by ivory hunters and human population pressure.
In
1997 Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton established the Research Centre in
Samburu to study the elephants that frequent the reserve and range
beyond it. Four years later Oria opened Eco Camp, Elephant Watch, where
guests can go out daily to spend intimate hours with the known
elephants. Changila was one of the few remaining big bulls in the area,
but was killed for its ivory in 2013.
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