Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Hello! We are the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Our story began in the country of Kenya in 1977. Our founder, a kind person named Dame Daphne Sheldrick, saw that many wild animals needed help. She wanted to create a safe place for them. Our main purpose is to rescue and protect animals that have lost their families, especially very young elephants and rhinos. When a baby animal, or orphan, loses its mother, it cannot survive on its own in the wild. We give these animals a second chance at life.

Our most well-known work is rescuing orphaned baby elephants. When a tiny elephant arrives at our nursery, it is often scared and alone. We have special workers called keepers who become the elephants’ new family. The keepers stay with the baby elephants 24 hours a day, every single day. They are there to feed them, keep them warm, and make them feel safe and loved. At night, the keepers even sleep in the same room as the elephants. To help them grow big and strong, we feed them a special milk formula. Our founder, Dame Daphne, invented this milk recipe herself because regular cow's milk isn't healthy for baby elephants.

After a few years, the little elephants are not so little anymore! When they are older and stronger, they are ready for the next step of their journey. They move from our nursery, which is near a city called Nairobi, to larger, wilder areas inside a place called Tsavo National Park. Here, they are not alone. They join other rescued elephants that are older and know how to live in the wild. These older orphans teach the younger ones important skills, like how to find food and water. This process takes a long time, but our goal is for every single orphan to one day be ready to leave our care and join a wild elephant herd, living freely as they are meant to.

While we are famous for helping elephants, our work doesn't stop there. We protect all kinds of wildlife. We also rescue and raise orphaned rhinos, which are another large animal that needs our protection. Beyond rescuing individual animals, we work to keep their homes safe. We have projects that protect the land where these animals live, making sure the forests and grasslands stay healthy for them. We also have special teams that work in the wild. These teams help stop illegal hunting, which is a big danger to elephants and rhinos. By protecting both the animals and their environment, we help all of Kenya’s wildlife have a safer future.