Halfday David Shedricks Elephant Orphanage & Giraffe Center: Highlights

The Giraffe Centre is the creation of the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife. In 1979 Jock Leslie-Melville (the Kenyan grandson of a Scottish earl) and his wife, Betty, began raising a baby giraffe in their Langata home. At the time, the animals had lost their habitat in Western Kenya, with only 130 of them left on the 18,000-acre Soy Ranch that was being sub-divided to resettle squatters. Their first effort to save the subspecies was to bring two young giraffes, Daisy and Marlon, to their home in the Lang’ata suburb, southwest of Nairobi. Here they raised the calves and started a programme of breeding giraffe in captivity. This is where the centre remains to date.

Established 44 years ago in 1977, the Sheldrick Trust is a non-profitthat runs one of the most successful elephant conservation and rehabilitation programmes globally, with 263 elephants raised. Dr Dame Daphne Sheldrick founded the orphanage in memory of her husband, David Sheldrick, who devoted his life to the conservation of nature and wildlife. He was one of the Tsavo National park founders and pioneered a milk formula for baby elephant and rhino calves. The sanctuary raises the elephants until they are no longer milk dependent and gradually introduces them back into the wild in Tsavo National Park. The scope of Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s work can be seen at a great range of Kenya’s National Parks: Covering the Greater Tsavo Conservation Area, Meru National Park and Mau Forest. The organisation’s crucial mission is tostop poaching, one of the biggest threats these animals face in the wild.