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A herd of elephants walking in line over a dry, slightly overgrown plain.

2025 Prize

The third Esmond B. Martin Royal Geographical Society Prize was awarded to Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Dr Jake Wall.

They both received the Prize for their exceptional work on elephant conservation.

Iain and Jake represent the best of wildlife conservation – few have done as much as them to advance the application of geographical research and technology to this mission. Their work epitomises the spirit of the Esmond B. Martin Royal Geographical Society Prize, embodying innovation, dedication, and a profound commitment to solving the pressing challenges facing wildlife.Professor Joe Smith, Director of the Society

Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton

Iain’s pioneering 1972 doctoral thesis on elephant social dynamics and movements shaped understanding of elephant societies and informed conservation strategies across Africa. As founder of Save the Elephants, in 1993 Iain revolutionised elephant conservation with the use of GPS tracking technology, enabling the use of data to combat poaching, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict.

Iain has also been instrumental in policymaking, alerting the world to the African elephant ivory poaching crisis that led to the international ban in ivory trade in 1989. His ongoing advocacy against ivory poaching has been transformative and, in 2013, he co-founded the Elephant Crisis Fund, which has raised over £30 million to combat poaching, disrupt ivory trafficking, and reduce demand. 

Iain’s deep commitment to mentoring conservationists and empowering local communities – particularly in Kenya where he has nurtured talent and fostered leadership and technical expertise – has had real impact. The early efforts of one man have grown into a powerful eighty-strong, Kenya-based organisation closely working with, and often financially supporting, a network of hundreds of conservation colleagues continent wide.

Dr Jake Wall

Jake’s dedication and passion for wildlife is matched only by his tireless efforts to provide conservationists with the tools and methods they need to better protect the natural world.

As Director of Research and Conservation for the Mara Elephant Project (MEP), Jake established a long-term elephant monitoring programme and developed an application to easily map landscape features, especially fences, which have become a major threat to wildlife movements in the Mara ecosystem.

Prior to working with MEP, Jake worked as the Geospatial Scientific Advisor to Save the Elephants for 15 years where he developed a real-time tracking system to visualise GPS data from collared African elephants across the continent. Algorithms scanned the data and, among other things, sent alerts when elephants had moved unusually fast, suggesting panic, or had stopped moving which might indicate a poaching event.

In partnership with Save the Elephants and the Allen Institute for AI, this system was expanded into EarthRanger, now used by over 600 sites across 74 countries and growing rapidly.

To complement EarthRanger, Jake is leading the development of Ecoscope, which provides users with access to ready-made analytics from sources of publicly available remote sensing data. It allows researchers and conservationists to easily engage with the data and generate meaningful outputs, thereby turning conservation data into information to improve decision making, insight and the protection of ecosystems.

Informing action lecture

On 7 April 2025, Dr Jake Wall gave a lecture on his work mapping the GPS journeys of African elephants across the continent. The recording is available exclusively for members to view on demand.