A self-self-procclaimed wildlife warrior, Kenyan born Dr Kahumbu showed an interest in conservation from early, earning a scholarship to study Biology and Ecology at the University of Bristol, furthering her studies to a Masters degree at the University of Florida. Around this time, she started her first job in conservation at the age of 18. This was under the mentor Richard Leakey and was to measure the entire stockpile of ivory in the Kenyan governments vault. She was working under a team that managed to educate the government on the conservational danger that comes with the hunting of African elephants for their ivory tusks, especially by those of other nationalities. As a result, an agreement was reached whereby the entire stockpile of ivory tusks would be burned. A “poorer” country like Kenya burning millions of dollars of ivory in order to prove their strong stance on this issue made a global statement. Many other countries followed, including the USA, burning their own ivory stockpiles. This still continues to this day with the latest Kenyan burning being a record breaking 105 tonnes in 2016. Working on this project, along with her close interaction with elephants at the time was enough to change her prior academic focus of primates to elephants. Originally, she felt that nothing can be done to help once hearing the statistic that 75% of elephants population had been lost in the past 15 years, but working first hand encouraged her that change can be made. Dr Kahumbu then pursued a doctorate, on scholarship, at Princeton University where she studied elephants in coastal Kenya.

 

She has been awarded numerous accolades for her conservation work, including, but not limited to, the Whitley Award and National Geographic Buffet Award. In addition to this, she received a special commendation from the UN for her critical role in creating awareness and mobilising action around the crisis facing elephants in Kenya.