Love, Life, and Elephants by Daphne Sheldrick

The nursery takes orphan-elephants until they are no longer dependent on milk, after which they are transported to the Tsavo East orphanages, where they spend the next five to seven years before being released into the wild.Ī quick fact-finding tour which included the opportunity to explore Sheldrick and the team’s work from both a front-of-house and a behind-the-scenes perspective, I remember the nursery as being enormously sweet, and very real. After being shown around with a gaggle of schoolchildren, whose reactions were worth the trip alone, I met some of the calves, and learnt from their keepers about the design of some of their systems for successful rehabilitation, not least the fact that they sleep with their charges, and rotate so as to avoid calves bonding with just the one carer.

According to the National Geographic, she saw the elephant as a ‘very human animal’, saying that ‘their emotions are very like ours’, and described the newly orphaned arrivals as ‘devastated, broken and grieving.’Īpart from it having proved a popular destination for many a JbD guest, and in particular those travelling with children, my own contact with the orphanage was a brief visit to the Nairobi-based nursery, which was established in 1987. A conservationist and writer, Sheldrick’s understanding of the elephant were a wonderful mix of science and intuition. Since starting the Elephant Orphanage in 1977, the trust has been responsible for the successful hand-rearing of over 150 elephants, many of which were successfully reintroduced into the wild, and went on to sire or give birth to their own young.

According to a statement released by her daughter, Angela Sheldrick, she passed ‘after a long battle with breast cancer.’ Founder of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, she was widely known as being the first person to hand-rear a newborn elephant, and spent a staggering 28 odd-years developing a milk formula that suited her young charges.

You will no doubt be aware that Daphne Sheldrick’s died over the weekend.

Love, Life, and Elephants by Daphne Sheldrick