Gerry Creighton was born in Dublin, Ireland and has over forty years of accumulated experience working in a broad range of fields in the zoo sector. Gerry’s career spanned several decades in Dublin Zoo, during a particularly transformative period for one of Europe’s oldest zoos. Since its foundation in 1831, Dublin Zoo has evolved into a modern, vital and progressive European centre for conservation, education and animal husbandry.
Gerry founded Global Elephant Care in 2020, a consultancy business that is dedicated to researching and implementing the very highest standards of care for zoo animals worldwide. Although specializing in elephant wellness, the philosophy of Global Elephant Care is firmly based on holistic wellness for all zoo animals. GEC offers expert zoo consultation with an emphasis on revolutionary habitat design, positive reinforcement training, interactive environments, maximizing space, appropriate social grouping, encouraging species-specific behaviours and providing minimal human-dependent activities.
Gerry has had extensive media interaction throughout his career and was a lead contributor for multiple series of The Zoo television series, which has reached a global audience of over 100 million people. Gerry has given regular and extensive television, radio and podcast interviews and gave a Ted X talk in November 2021 entitled “The human voice of the elephant”, on how best practice in elephant care is evolving around the world. You will find links to examples of his media work below.
Gerry’s best-selling autobiography “Raised by the Zoo, my life with elephants and other animals” was published by Gill Books in September 2023.
Gerry Creighton: The Human Voice of the Elephant. | TED Talk