About Ian Redmond
Ian Michael Redmond OBE FZS FLS (born 11 April 1954) is a tropical field biologist and conservationist. Renowned for his work with mountain gorillas and elephants, Redmond has been involved in more than 50 documentaries on the subject for, among others, the BBC, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Redmond was also involved in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, spending some time with Sigourney Weaver so she could better understand her character. As a junior researcher working with Dian Fossey, he was involved in the filming of David Attenborough's famous encounter with a group of mountain gorillas in her sanctuary in Rwanda. He recalled the event in a BBC tribute programme marking Attenborough's 90th birthday. When Dian's favourite gorilla Digit was killed in 1978, it was Ian who found the body. He subsequently became chairman and trustee of The Gorilla Organization (originally known as the Digit Fund, later the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, then Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Europe), and took part in multiple Great Gorilla Run fundraising events for this charity, walking 8 km on his knuckles (as gorillas do). Similarly to Dian's Digit Fund, Ian set up the African Elephant Fund after he discovered the body of Charles, an underground elephant he had named. The African Ele-Fund was known for the 1989 Elefriends campaign to ban the ivory trade. He was Ambassador for the 2009 United Nations 'Year of the Gorilla', from 2020-2024 was Ambassador for the UN's Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals., and is currently Ambassador for Virtual Ecotourism. He has acted as consultant/advisor to the Born Free Foundation, International Fund for Animal Welfare, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Orangutan Foundation International. He established (and chairs) the Ape Alliance, and previously founded the UK Rhino Group (a coalition of 26 conservation organizations which staged a 'Rhino May Day' on 8 May 1999). He also helped launch the UNEP/UNESCO Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) in 2001 and was its Chief Consultant and Envoy until 2012. More recently he co-founded Rebalance Earth, a capital investment manager treating nature as investible infrastructure.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.