Dame Daphne Sheldrick
FOR more than 60 years Daphne Sheldrick dedicated her life to the protection of Africa’s wildlife and some of the world’s most iconic and threatened animals.
She hand-reared hundreds of orphaned baby elephants in Kenya and other parts of Africa using a milk formula containing coconut oil, which helped them thrive and enabled them to be returned to the wild.
Sheldrick was a firm believer these animals also needed to be understood emotionally and became a leading voice on the rights of elephants and other species to live a free life protected from poachers.
She was also one of the earliest advocates of a total global ban on ivory.
Sheldrick was born the third of four children in Kenya’s Rift Valley where her family, originally from Britain, settled after moving to South Africa in the late 19th century.
Educated at Kenya High School, she married her first husband Bill Woodley, a game warden in Nairobi National Park, at 19, with the pair going on to have a daughter Gillian. A couple of years later they went to live in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park where she met David Sheldrick, the park’s chief warden.
Following her divorce from Bill, Daphne married David in 1960 and they began taking in orphaned animals at the park. After David died in 1977 she founded the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi National Park, focusing on elephants and rhinos.
Her work featured in many TV documentaries and she wrote a number of books, including The Orphans Of Tsavo and An Elephant Called Eleanor.
She was made an MBE in 1989 and a damehood followed in 2006. Her death follows a long battle with breast cancer. She is survived by two daughters – Gillian, and Angela from her second marriage.