For AI-assisted research, proposals and internal shortlists.
Ian Redmond is a tropical field biologist and conservationist, renowned for his work with great apes and elephants. For more than 40 years he has been associated with mountain gorillas, through research, filming, tourism and conservation work. He served as Ambassador for the UN Year of the Gorilla in 2009 and for the UN Convention on Migratory Species from 2010 to the present.
As with his mentor, the late Dr Dian Fossey, the main focus of his work shifted in 1978 from research to conservation work, after poachers killed Digit тАУ a young silverback in one of the Karisoke study groups тАУ to sell his skull and hands. Finding the headless, handless body of a gorilla he regarded as a friend was a turning point in his life. Ten years later in Kenya, the shock was repeated when some of the cave-elephants he was studying were killed by ivory poachers.
As a result, Ian Redmond became a conservation consultant and advisor for organisations such as the Born Free Foundation, the Gorilla Organization (for which he became Chairman of the Board of Trustees in 2012), the Orangutan Foundation, International Fund for Animal Welfare, etc.
To encourage such groups to work together, he established and chairs the Ape Alliance (95 organisations linked via www.4apes.com), and previously the African Ele-Fund and the UK Rhino Group. He was Chief Consultant and Envoy for GRASP тАУ the UNEP/UNESCO Great Apes Survival Partnership www.UN-GRASP.org he helped launch in 2001 тАУ until 2012 and continues as a consultant for UNEP and the FAO on matters pertaining to apes, bushmeat, forests and related issues.
He is now the Ambassador for Virtual Ecotourism, and a member of the team developing this exciting concept for immersive, interactive conservation education, which can be experienced at www.vEcotourism.org and in VR apps such as Ape App VR, Gorilla Safari VR and vEcoLabs.
Born in Malaysia, Ian RedmondтАЩs passion for animals developed during his boyhood in Beverley, a market town in Yorkshire, and after University, took him in 1976 to Africa. There he joined Dian Fossey, studying and protecting the mountain gorillas of Rwanda and Zaire (now DRC). This work also led him into documentary film-making. Ian is the man who introduced Sir David Attenborough to the gorillas in 1978, for the famous BBC тАШLife on EarthтАЩ sequences, and who taught Sigourney Weaver to grunt like a gorilla in 1987, for her award-winning role in the film тАШGorillas in the MistтАЩ (in which he is characterised as тАШThe Worm BoyтАЩ).
Ian Redmond has advised in the making of, and/or appeared in, more than 100 documentary films for the BBC, National Geographic (most recently тАШSecrets in the MistтАЩ a mini-series about Dian Fossey), Discovery Channel, TF1, etc. and the 3D movie тАШThe Last of the Great ApesтАЩ. His books have been translated into many languages and he is in demand as an entertaining and thought-provoking public speaker and interviewee.
Putting conservation principles into practice, he has led anti-poacher patrols, guided film crews and/or special interest tours into close encounters with gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, elephants and erupting volcanoes, and worked to support local conservationists during the horrors of RwandaтАЩs and D.R. CongoтАЩs civil wars. Under-cover investigations led him to play the role of a potential ape-buyer in order to infiltrate poaching rings in both DRC and Congo-Brazzaville and a potential Coltan dealer in DRC.
Ian Redmond work on behalf of animals was recognised in 1996 with the presentation of the PAWS Humane Achievement Award, at a ceremony in Hollywood, California. Ian Storry was appointed OBE in the QueenтАЩs Birthday Honours in 2006 and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Oxford Brookes University in 2011, University of Roehampton in 2014 and Keele University in 2018. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the New York Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in 2013, the 2013 Animal Action Award for Conservation from the International Fund for Animal Welfare and an RSPCA/Mirror Animal Heroes Award in 2017.
Ian RedmondтАЩs research interests also include: underground elephants тАУ he carried out the first study and photography of elephants in the caves of Mt Elgon in Kenya and helped Sir David Attenborough to film them for the acclaimed BBC series тАШLife of MammalsтАЩ; parasites тАУ he studied gorilla parasites, and in Papua New Guinea, discovered several new species and a new Genus of nematode worms; reptiles and amphibians тАУ he discovered two new species of frog, also in New Guinea; and re-introducing orphaned apes, elephants and polar bears to the wild.
Asked about his work, Ian Redmond says, тАЬI am a naturalist by birth, a biologist by training, and a conservationist by necessity. But conservation for me isnтАЩt just about saving species. On a larger scale, the planet needs us to save functioning eco-systems; on a smaller scale, we must also recognise that species are made up of individual animals. For me, it became personal when I had the privilege of getting to know individual wild animals in the wildтАж I can truthfully say that some of my best friends are gorillas, and I care passionately about them and the future of all life on Earth.тАЭ
Photo caption: тАШIan Redmond in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Courtesy of Michael OтАЩDonnell, Channel 7тАЩ
