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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 17th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2014> Daphne Sheldrick, Kenya—The Animal Nanny of Africa
 [Establishing the Elephant Orphanage]

Within 15 years, the only 600,000 elephants in Africa will die. Illegal poaching and ivory trade is the main cause of their death. Human greed is the killer of this disaster.
—Daphne Sheldrick
 
Rescuing animals for over 60 years
Daphne Sheldrick, the founder of Elephant Orphanage in Africa, established an orphanage for wildlife in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, in 1977 with an aim to rescue elephant and other wild creature orphans. To date she has raised 950 orphaned elephants and more than 3000 other injured wild creatures, training and preparing them to reunite back into nature. Groups after groups, these creatures have successfully mingled back with the wild herds. With perseverance and consistency, Daphne Sheldrick has rescued animals for over 60 years, restoring nature’s balance.
 
Honored by the British queen
In memory of her late second husband David Sheldrick, the legendary Warden of Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, and also because of her passion for wildlife, Daphne tried to raise and rehabilitate wild creature orphans in the national park, and to build a lovely home for those helpless orphans. Besides, to spread her husband’s love for animals, Daphne along with her first daughter Jill established the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to broaden their help to all the animal orphans in Africa. In 2001, Daphne received Kenya’s Order of the Burning Spear; in 2002, the BBC’s Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2006, she was awarded a DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) by the British queen.
 
And what really deserves praise is: since Daphne’s first husband Bill Woodley had colluded with poacher groups for interests, she was shamed and divorced him to keep fighting for animals. Later she married David Sheldrick and together they rescued animals with all their heart.
 
With respect, empathy, and love for all life, Daphne Sheldrick dedicates her life to protecting African wildlife, confronting poaching, combating illegal trade of ivory and rhino horn, and calling for reform of wildlife protection law. She divorced for the sake of animals and married for the same reason. For the past 60 years, rescuing and helping animals is always her top priority. Many Hollywood stars have been moved by her and joined volunteers to protect animals for good. Daphne is truly an animal nanny. Among 2239 candidates around the globe, Daphne stood out and won the Love of Lives Medal of 2014 given by Chou, Ta-Kuan Foundation in Taiwan.
 
Involvement with animals
Daphne was born in Kenya in 1934; her ancestors were the first to migrate from South Africa to Kenya due to incentives given by the colonial government at the beginning of the 20th century when British government plundered East Africa and kept its strategic location. Daphne’s stories with animals started from her childhood. Her parents earned a living by running a farm and raising livestock, poultry, and pets. So Daphne spent her childhood dealing with various kinds of animals with her family, and this is why she doesn’t fear animals at all. Every time they went to visit her grandparents, they would pass by a forest and little Daphne would learn from her mother all sorts of amazing plants and wild creatures. These ordinary but unforgettable experiences made her want to explore nature. Later, her father was assigned to hunt wild creatures to make biltong as British soldiers’ supplies during WWII. Though Daphne couldn’t bear to see this, the travel experience with her father still gave her a good chance to get to know the beauty of Kenyan wildlife.
 
It was Daphne’s first husband Bill Woodley that led her into the field of wildlife conservation. Before their marriage, Woodley was a junior assistant warden at Nairobi National Park and later at Tsavo National Park, which was still developing then. After they got married, Daphne took her first daughter Jill to settle down in Tsavo National Park, and got to know Bill’s boss, David Sheldrick. At that time Tsavo National Park was the largest national park in Kenya. Situated in the faraway east, it was almost unknown and few people went there. However, poaching had been rampant in this area teeming with elephants and black rhinoceros. Wildlife in the park had suffered serious injuries and death as a result of poaching, and David vowed to combat these poaching activities.
 
Divorce and marriage
Since Daphne’s first husband Bill Woodley had colluded with poacher groups for interests, she was shamed and divorced him to keep fighting for animals. Later she married David Sheldrick and together they rescued animals with all their heart.
 
David had recruited many non-local young men and given them military-like training, making them a “field army” to combat the increasingly rampant poaching groups. This field army later became a model for other anti-poaching organizations among East African national parks. Seeing the successful outcome of David’s anti-poaching activities, the colonial government not only enlarged their organization and provided more equipment, but also increased penalties on poachers and brokers, effectively threatening them.
 
Meanwhile, Daphne was doing some general administration work in the park. When they had free time, David would bring Daphne and her daughter Jill to see around in the park, showing them different modes of animal life in the wild and telling them his views on wildlife conservation. The most important thing was that David let Daphne and Jill take care of the animal orphans he had raised. Looking after these orphans became part of Daphne’s life and also made her aware of the problem of animal orphans.
 
Daphne was so touched by David’s spirit to combat poachers and to establish a heaven for wildlife to enjoy. And she felt ashamed of her husband Bill, a warden of the national park, who worked in wildlife reserves during the week but indulged in hunting outside on the weekend. Also because of different living habits, they ended up in divorce. Daphne then got married to David Sheldrick.
 
Animal guardians
After David successfully solved the poacher problem, he and Daphne started to shift their focus to construction and conservation work of Tsavo National Park. They once camped in the park for up to three months, finding out all kinds of problems of the park and making an ecological record. They also brought back many orphaned elephants and rhinos, with whose coming the already large group of animal orphans enlarged once again. What’s interesting is that these animal orphans got along well with each other and often roamed through the park in groups, which made visitors really surprised and thus became a unique selling point of the park. Daphne was also willing to share the open space around their house in the park as an orphaned animal fun park. She was always thinking about how to tend these helpless orphans more carefully and how to prepare them for reintegrating into nature in the future.
 
In 1963, Kenya became independent. Daphne and David did not leave their beloved Tsavo National Park and the animal orphans; instead, they persisted in doing the conservation work on the land of Africa. But tough challenges never stopped. In the beginning of the independence, Tsavo National Park had successfully rehabilitated wild elephants; elephant groups thus kept on growing. Some people were worried that such large groups of elephants would edge out other species and decided to kill some of them to maintain ecological balance. However, as head warden, David was strongly against this idea. He firmly believed that every animal has emotions and feelings. Killing would not only affect elephant psychology but also devastate their trust in humans. For another story, once there were scientists asking for some elephant bodies for research. After David reluctantly agreed the specimen collecting for the first time, he found that actually there were other more humanitarian ways to study elephant population distribution and migration issues. At last, those scientists were asked to leave after David had negotiated with the government. Stricter regulations of wildlife observation within national parks were also made.
 
Operation Mshale
For David and Daphne the most hateful thing was the revival of poaching. In September 1973, ivory price had skyrocketed in the international market and so had the volume of ivory exports from Kenya. Kenya’s elephant population was around 500 thousand in 1972, but dropped sharply to 300 thousand in 1973. Still, the corrupt authority didn’t do anything to prevent poaching. So David once again came forward and set up Operation Mshale to end poaching. With more sophisticated equipment and specialist judges, they combated poaching among national parks, but still could not stop thousands of elephants and rhinos from being killed.
 
David was on the front line of wildlife protection, but it was Daphne who always gave him all the strong support to carry out his actions without the slightest worry. Daphne worked as a real animal nanny in the park, caring for all the life there. A faint, milk-dependent baby elephant was once sent to their site from far away. Its life was at stake and it was the youngest baby elephant Daphne had ever taken in. Feeding milk to elephants was considered a very difficult work at that time; what’s worse, in Daphne’s experiences, she’d never successfully saved a milk-dependent newborn elephant before. Yet, the crying of the cub conveyed the message of its willingness to survive, which moved Daphne when she was about to give up. After a serial of trials, she finally perfected the milk formula for baby elephants, using coconut oil. The cub, Shmetty, was thus able to live and join the group of animal orphans.
 
The legacy of David Sheldrick
In 1976, Kenya’s National Parks combined with the Government Game Department, and David was sent to Nairobi to head the Planning Unit, in charge of all the national parks and national reserves in Kenya. Daphne and David were forced to leave their beloved Tsavo National Park where they dedicated their lives for about 30 years. And Daphne was concerned that the animal orphans might be mistreated by the park’s successors. But since the government order was made, she had no choice but to accept it.
 
David passed away in his prime in 1977, which was indeed a terrible blow to Daphne. But she did not indulge in grief for too long. To continue David’s lifelong mission, she wrote articles about animal conservation for the African Wildlife Foundation, sharing the realities she and her husband had seen themselves on the front line. Though Daphne could not confront poachers on the front line as David had done, with the help of family, friends, and the African Wildlife Foundation she obtained permission to establish the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi National Park. Following is its mission statement:

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust embraces all measures that compliment the conservation, preservation and protection of wildlife. These include anti-poaching, safe guarding the natural environment, enhancing community awareness, addressing animal welfare issues, providing veterinary assistance to animals in need, rescuing and hand rearing elephant and rhino orphans, along with other species that can ultimately enjoy a quality of life in wild terms when grown.

The results of Daphne’s work to take in and conserve elephant and rhino orphans were excellent. She also developed a range of animal food, making it possible for animal orphans to grow up and reintegrate freely back to nature. She used the power of documentary, religion, and celebrity to keep drawing attention to issues of wildlife conservation and pressing the Kenya government to deal with poaching for ivory and rhino horns.
 
Under near 40 years of efforts made by Daphne and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, huge progress has been achieved in wildlife conservation in Kenya and in Africa. Now her second daughter Angela Sheldrick is in charge of the trust. In 2001, Daphne received Kenya’s Order of the Burning Spear; in 2002, the BBC’s Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2006, she received a DBE by the British queen, the first knighthood to be awarded in Kenya since its independence in 1963. Eighty-year-old Daphne is proud of being an animal nanny throughout her life. She takes every day as the last day to fight for wildlife. With every possible means, she promotes wildlife conservation to the whole Africa and even to the whole world.