Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Moss (born July 24, 1940 in Ossining , NY) is an American researcher , conservationist and author who specializes in African elephants . In years of research, she has identified more than 1400 individuals and recorded their data.

Life

Cynthia Moss is the daughter of newspaper publisher Julian Moss and his wife Lilian Moss. She is the younger of two daughters. In 1962 she graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. She then worked as a journalist for Newsweek magazine .

In 1967 Moss first traveled to East Africa . In Tanzania she visited Lake Manyara National Park , where she met the British elephant researcher Iain Douglas-Hamilton . In 1968 she quit her job at Newsweek to assist Douglas-Hamilton in his research project.

In 1972 Moss began her research project with elephants in Amboseli National Park in Kenya . Her research focused on the behavior, structure of family life and the life cycle of elephants. In the 1980s she turned her attention to the conservation of elephants because their population declined sharply due to the ivory trade and the destruction of the natural habitat. In 1988 she flew to Washington with Joyce Poole to report to the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) about the impending extinction of elephants.

Moss founded the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, which is registered in Kenya and the USA. Through the organization, Moss strives to train African scientists in elephant research, to communicate with other elephant researchers and to protect nature in Africa and Asia. She also conducts studies on elephant populations in Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Botswana.

Moss wrote a variety of books and scientific articles. She created four documentaries for the BBC television channel in which she accompanied a family of elephants in Amboseli National Park for 19 years. Another documentary titled Africa's Forgotten Elephants , also for the BBC television, was about an elephant population that is the most difficult to access in Africa. She also produced a 13-part series about the Amboseli elephants for Animal Planet TV .

Awards

• 2001: MacArthur Fellowship , a 5-year scholarship for outstanding creativity and exceptional achievement

Fonts

• In the Wild: Animal Viewing in East Africa , 1982, ISBN 978-0-241-02453-9 .
• The Year of the Elephants: Diary of an African Elephant Family , 1992, ISBN 978-3-492-40105-0 .
• Little Big Ears: The Story of Eli , 1997, ISBN 978-0-689-80031-3 (English).
• Elephant Woman: Cynthia Moss Explores the World of Elephants , 1997, ISBN 978-0-689-80142-6 (English).
• Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family with a new epilogue, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 978-0-226-54237-9 (English).
  • German: The elephants from Kilimanjaro. Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family , 2000, ISBN 978-3-442-12370-4 .
• The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Mammal , 2011, ISBN 978-0-226-54237-9 (English).

Web links

• Portrait: Cynthia Moss at elephanttrust.org ( English )
• Interview with Cynthia Moss in the New York Times , May 30, 2015
• Interview with Cynthia Moss at elephant.elehost.com, November 1, 1999 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Cynthia Moss' homepage, accessed on December 17, 2012 ( Memento of the original from October 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Biography of Cynthia Moss, accessed on December 17, 2012  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Article on Cynthia Moss, accessed December 17, 2012.