Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Moss, Program Director and Trustee, Amboseli Trust for Elephants.

"Born and educated in the U.S.A., Cynthia Moss moved to Africa in 1968 and has spent the past 39 years there studying elephants and working for their conservation. Her involvement with elephants began in Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania where she worked with Iain Douglas-Hamilton on his pioneering elephant study. In 1972, with Harvey Croze, she started the Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) in Kenya which she continues to direct. Her studies have concentrated on the distribution, demography, population dynamics, social organization and behavior of the Amboseli elephants. In 2001 she created the Amboseli Trust for Elephants in both Kenya and the USA. Her present activities include: overall direction of ATE which includes: research and monitoring; training elephant researchers from African elephant range states; outreach to the Maasai community in Amboseli; disseminating scientific results; networking with other elephant scientists and conservation in Africa and Asia; and promoting public awareness by writing popular articles and books and by making films about elephants. Moss is the author of four books: Portraits in the Wild (University of Chicago Press); Elephant Memories (University of Chicago Press); Echo of the Elephants (William Morrow); Little Big Ears (Simon & Schuster); and co-author with Laurence Pringle of Elephant Woman (Atheneum). She has written numerous popular and scientific articles and has made four award-winning TV documentaries about elephants."


 * MacArthur Fellowship: Public Issues
 * Patron, Tusk Trust