Friends of Africa International Advisory Board Member

Dame Daphne Sheldrick, Ph.D., Founder, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

For over 25 years, from 1955 until 1976, Kenya born Daphne Sheldrick lived and worked alongside her late husband, David, the famous founder Warden of Kenya’s giant Tsavo National Park. During that time she raised and rehabilitated back into the wild community orphans of misfortune from many different wild species, including Elephants aged two and upwards; Black Rhinos, Buffaloes, Zebra, Eland, Kudu, Impala, Duikers, Reedbuck, Dikdiks, Warthogs and many smaller animals such as civets, mongooses and birds. She is a recognized International authority on the rearing of wild creatures and is the first person to have perfected the milk formula and necessary husbandry for both infant milk dependent Elephants and Rhinos. For her work in this field Daphne Sheldrick was decorated by the Queen in 1989 with an M.B.E., elevated to U.N.E.P.’s elite Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1992, among the first 500 people worldwide to have been accorded this particular honour, and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery by Glasgow University in June 2000. In December 2001 her work was honoured by the Kenya Government through a prestigious decoration – a Moran of the Burning Spear (M.B.S.), and in 2002 by the B.B.C. when she received their Lifetime Achievement Award. In the November 2005 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine Daphne Sheldrick was named as one of 35 people worldwide who have made a difference in terms of animal husbandry and wildlife conservation. In the 2006 New Year’s Honours List, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Dr. Daphne Sheldrick 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.

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