Daphne Sheldrick grew up on a Kenyan dairy farm in the 1930s surrounded by animals of every shape and size. At age 3, she adopted her first wild orphan, a baby bushbuck. When it was time to let the antelope go, she was overwhelmed with sadness, but the experience taught her an important lesson: wild creatures need their freedom.

Her brother was the first warden of the first national park in Kenya: Nairobi National Park. It is there that Daphne met her husband, David Sheldrick. They married in 1955.

David was the founder warden of Tsavo East National Park and the head warden of its main section from 1948 to 1976. Over the years, he earned international renown as a conservationist and became one of the world's leading authorities on African wildlife.

Soon after her marriage to David, Daphne was taking in Tsavo East's orphaned and injured animals. At first it was warthogs and small antelopes, but eventually she was caring for young buffaloes, rhinos and elephants. In the early 1960s, she developed the first milk formula for raising milk-dependent rhino calves. After several more years of trial and error, she perfected a similar formula for elephants.

Her husband David passed away in 1977, and Daphne Sheldrick found herself at a crossroads. People the world over were donating money in David's memory, and wild orphans continued to arrive at Daphne's doorstep. It was then that she decided to found the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

With permission from the Kenyan government, Daphne established the trust's headquarters in Nairobi National Park. There, she set up a nursery for wild orphans, and over the past three decades has taught some 50 keepers how to care for them. Together they have rescued, reared and rehabilitated hundreds of needy animals.

Daphne's lifetime of experience with wildlife has given her an in-depth knowledge of their psychology and behavior. She has come to see elephants as duplicates of humans in nearly every respect, with the same capacity for mental and emotional intelligence that we have.

When she's not raising wildlife in Nairobi, Daphne is out promoting wildlife conservation and campaigning against the abuse of captive animals. She has given numerous lectures, made many television appearances, written dozens of articles and authored four international best-selling books. She has received several prestigious honors (listed below) and was recently knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of England for her life's work with wildlife.

« Back to Main.