13/04/2018
Our condolences go out to the Sheldrick family, friends and the conservation community all around the world on the passing of Daphne Sheldrick.
Daphne Sheldrick was a prominent conservationist and the founder of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. She received global attention for her work raising more than 200 orphaned baby elephants. The statement says that “more than 100 orphaned elephants are now living a wild life, with 29 known wild born babies.”
Daphne has been a prominent figure in wildlife conservation since 1955 and has changed the landscape of conservation by saving countless numbers of elephants and other wild species.
Daphne will be missed but her legacy and work will live on through the great people at the DSWT and the thousands of people and animals whose lives she touched along the way.
From her bio on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website:
For over 25 years Kenya-born Daphne Sheldrick lived and worked alongside her husband David, during which time they raised and successfully rehabilitated many wild species. Daphne Sheldrick’s involvement with wildlife has spanned a lifetime, and she is now a recognised International authority on the rearing of wild creatures and is the first person to have perfected the milk formula and necessary husbandry for infant milk-dependent Elephants and Rhinos.
Since the death of her husband, Daphne and her family have lived and worked in the Nairobi National Park, where they have built the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and its pioneering Orphans Project, into the global force for wildlife conservation that is today.
Daphne Sheldrick’s involvement with wildlife has spanned a lifetime. Born in Kenya on the 4th June 1934, she grew up amongst animals, both wild and domestic. The key to Daphne’s success has been her life-long experience with wild creatures, an in-depth knowledge of animal psychology, the behavioral characteristics of different species, and of course, that most essential component, a sincere and deep empathy.
Honours and Awards
For her work in this field Daphne Sheldrick was decorated by the Queen in 1989 with an M.B.E. Following this she was elevated to U.N.E.P.’s elite Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1992 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery by Glasgow University in June 2000.
In December 2001 her work was further honoured by the Kenya Government, who presented Daphne with a Moran of the Burning Spear (M.B.S.), followed by a prestigious accolade in 2002 by the B.B.C. of their Lifetime Achievement Award.
In the 2006 New Year’s Honours List, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Dr Daphne Sheldrick to Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, the first Knighthood to be awarded in Kenya since the country received Independence in 1963.
