Please introduce yourself and tell us briefly about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
My name is Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick. I've just been knighted by the British queen. I'm quite proud of that. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust was established in memory of my late husband, who died in 1977 when I was aged just 42. Since then we've worked with conservation in Kenya to raise 75 infant orphaned elephants, and we've been able to help the Kenya Wildlife Service in many areas.

How did you first become involved with raising orphaned elephants?
Well, I was sort of born into this job. I was born in Kenya, and all our holidays were spent under camp and on safari at a time when wild animals were everywhere. I married into the system. My brother was the first warden of the first park, which is Nairobi National Park. This is where I met my husband. We lived for 30 years in the Tsavo National Park, which is the size of Michigan state. And there, the orphaned elephants started coming in. Not just elephants, many other species as well, but the elephants provided the greatest challenge.

How does the Trust respond when it learns of an orphaned elephant?
Well, right now we're actually in the middle of an orphan rescue. There's been an alert in Amboseli National Park: a little orphan of about 18 months old, bearing in mind that no elephant can live without milk under 2 years of age. This calf is just over 1. So, we've had to charter a plane. All the keepers have gone down there with effects to dart this elephant, because it's quite large. (They) then load it onto the plane, put it on a drift as soon as it's loaded on the plane — because obviously it's going to be in a very weakened condition — and then it's flown here to the nursery. As I speak, it's arriving at the back door.

What happens when an elephant calf arrives at the nursery?
At the orphaned elephant nursery here in Nairobi National Park, the first thing we have to do is calm the baby down and to replace the elephant family with a human family of keepers, who are going to be with that baby day and night for the next two years of life, and who will be feeding it every three hours, day and night. And who will have to extend a lot of tender loving care to calm that baby down and convince it and persuade it to actually want to live. Because little elephants just want to die when they've lost their family. They're highly bonded to their family.

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Can you explain the bond between calf and keeper, and why it's so important?
Well, a baby elephant is like a human baby, and at any age an elephant duplicates a human. So they're very, very bonded into the family. A little elephant, when it comes here just months old, is like a human child of that age and it needs a family. The human family extends a lot of tender loving care. They feed it, they give it milk, they talk to it, they play with it and they sleep with it at night, and that little elephant will understand that "this is my family, my human family." But then when they start the reintegration down in Tsavo, aged about 10, they begin to find humans rather dull. Then they make the transition. It's up to them when they leave, and that depends on how young a calf is when it's brought in.

How closely do the orphaned calves bond with one another?
The orphans bond with one another just as human children do, bearing in mind that each elephant is an individual. We have outgoing ones, we have shy ones, we have all the spectrum you expect in human children. They have their disagreements, they have arguments, they're very competitive — and they love one another. Some of them are more loving than others. So, you interpret what's going on in the nursery in human terms, bearing in mind that they're infants. If you've had your own children, as I've had, you can understand exactly what's going on.

What happens when an elephant calf is too old for the orphanage?
The elephant orphanage here in Nairobi is just the nursery. This is to get them through the very fragile infant stage, which is fully milk-dependent, and when they're very, very fragile and die very easily. An elephant calf can be fine one day and dead the next. So, you know, you walk a tight rope. They're very, very sensitive and very, very vulnerable to all sorts of diseases, especially pneumonia. So this is just to get them healthy again, to get them happy again, to get them doing well again. If they're doing well at age 1, we've learned that if we can expose them to a wild situation at age 1, then the reintegration is easier, bearing in mind that all elephants have a genetic memory. But in order to hone that memory, you have to expose them to the wild situation.

What has raising orphaned calves taught you about elephants?
Well, raising the orphaned elephant calves has taught us that elephants are exactly a replica of humans. They enjoy the same life span, given half a chance. They have all the human emotions we have, and a few others besides. They have a genetic memory, which humans don't have. They have, I'm sure, the powers of telepathy. They have infrasound, which are voices that we don't even hear (beyond the human hearing range, they communicate with one another). They are absolutely amazing animals, and with every single one that comes in we learn something new about these wonderful, wonderful animals.

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