Cynthia Moss

Cynthia Jane Moss (born July 24, 1940) is an American ethologist and conservationist, wildlife researcher, and writer. Her studies have concentrated on the demography, behavior, social organization, and population dynamics of the African elephants of Amboseli. She is the director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, and is the program director and trustee for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE).

Life and work

Early life and education

Cynthia Jane Moss was born in Ossining (town), New York on July 24, 1940. Her father, Julian, was a publisher of several small-town newspapers, and her mother, Lillian, left her work as a legal secretary to raise Cynthia and her older sister, Carolyn.

Moss's appreciation for nature began early as her love for horseback riding allowed her to explore and observe the outdoors. She began riding horses at the age of 7, and by age 12, she had her own horse, Kelly. Her passion for horseback riding led her to attend Southern Seminary, a private boarding school with a distinguished riding program during her junior and senior years.

She attended Smith College where she took many classes in arts and literature, and where she earned her B.A. in philosophy in 1962.

Career

In 1964, she was hired as a news researcher and reporter for Newsweek, where she did interviews on religion and theater.

In these studies, they discovered that elephants could be identified by their ears because no two elephant's ear shapes, or combinations of markings and veins, were alike, which Moss describes in her first book Portraits in the Wild.

Although her work with Douglas-Hamilton had ended, Moss was determined to stay in Africa and continue studying and working with the wildlife. To gain the experience and credentials she needed to begin her own study of elephants, she worked with Sue and Tony Harthoorn in Nairobi, Kenya as a veterinary assistant, assisted in research on plains animals and elephant feeding behavior in Tsavo National Park, and became an editor for the newsletter of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), Wildlife News. 1975 also marked the beginning of a period of very low rainfall in the Amboseli region, which took a significant toll on the elephants, but also gave Moss a clear view of elephant behavior in times of drought.

In 2001, she created the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE), which is a non-profit trust, which focuses on elephant conservation, management, and policy-setting. along with several documentaries. Moss's studies have given a remarkable insight into the way elephants live, showing that they live in a highly organized, multi-tiered society that is led by a matriarch.

Awards Moss has received many awards in recognition of her dedication to the study of elephants in Amboseli including the Smith College Medal for Alumnae Achievement (1985), and the Conservation Award from the Friends of the National Zoo and the Audubon Society. In addition, she has made four award-winning documentaries about elephants including An Apology to Elephants (2013) – HBO, Echo: An Elephant to Remember (2010) – PBS, Nature, Echo and Other Elephants (2008) – BBC, David Attenborough, and Echo of the Elephants (2005) – PBS, Nature. In 2019 she received an honorary doctorate from Yale University.