Before going on an overseas trip to Kenya I came across an organisation called The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT).
The DSWT was founded by Dr Dame Daphne Sheldrick in Kenya in 1977 in memory of her late husband, David Sheldrick, the naturalist and founder warden of Kenya's Tsavo National Park. The DSWT embraces David's vision for the protection of wildlife and habitats and undertakes a variety of projects aimed at ensuring a viable future for animals and people, where they might live in harmony.
The work of DSWT is broken up into 4 main areas:
1. The Orphans’
project
Following CBS 60 Minutes in the USA and the BBC’s Elephant Diaries programmes,
this is perhaps the best known aspect of their work. Since 1987 they have
successfully rescued and hand-reared more than 135 orphaned elephants and 14
black rhinos. This success has been possible thanks to the worldwide network of
foster parents, the dedicated team of keepers and the efforts of Dr Dame Daphne
Sheldrick and her pioneering work in identifying the husbandry and milk formula
needed by orphans if they are to have any chance of survival.
https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/html/raiseorphan.htm
2. Anti-poaching
Since 1999 DSWT have undertaken anti-poaching operations in and around Tsavo
National Park, Kenya’s largest Park, covering an area equal in size to the
country of Wales. They currently operate seven fully mobile anti-poaching teams,
tasked with removing illegal snares, arresting poachers, and educating and
working with local communities to find solutions to the human-wildlife conflict
and poaching of wildlife. The anti-poaching teams have removed more than
100,000 illegal snares, saving literally hundreds of thousands of animals from
the slow and intensely painful death these indiscriminate killing devices cause
their victims.
3. Mobile Veterinary Support
In 2003 DSWT introduced a fully mobile veterinary unit, offering immediate aid to
animals injured or in distress in and around Tsavo, Shimba and Amboseli
National Parks and surrounding ranches. The unit, now led by Dr Poghon (2010)
has saved the lives of hundreds of animals of all species, aided in the rescue
of orphans and provided veterinary treatment to animals in need.
Following the success of the original Vet Unit, and sadly a growing need for a
similar mobile team elsewhere to help victims of illegal poaching, a second
Mobile Veterinary Unit was setup in 2007, serving the Maasai Mara, Lake
Naivasha, Ruma and Lake Nakuru National Parks. This unit is led by Dr. Mijele.
4. Community Outreach
DSWT recognise that the long term conservation of wildlife depends on the people
living alongside wildlife; as people and animals must learn to live in harmony
with one another.
They undertake a wide variety of community outreach programmes in the areas of
Nairobi and Tsavo, working with some of the poorest communities, to bring
knowledge and resources to these people. This support is provided in the form
of school trips into National Parks for children, who may otherwise have never
seen their country’s own wildlife, video presentations at schools, and the
provision of school books, art materials, sports equipment, desks, and water
catchment facilities.
It has now been over 3 years since I began the sponsorship of our elephant, Mutara.
At 2pm on the 27 July 2009, a newborn female calf was seen wandering all alone on the road. She would be named Mutara after the ADC station that saved her from certain death and was flown to Nairobi by East African Air Charters, in a small Cessna 206 aircraft.
The umbilicus was still attached meaning she may have not even had her mother's first colostrum milk to trigger her immune system. She was therefore given Elephant plasma through a saline drip.
Although the reason for her being orphaned is not definitely known, she is likely to also be a poaching victim.
This week after 3 years in the nursery unit, Mutara graduated from the Nairobi orphanage to the Ithumba reintegration centre.
Here she will begin the next step in her journey where she will now enjoy interactions with wild elephants and learn from the older orphans about life in Tsavo and to becoming once again, a wild elephant.
It has been a amazing experience to be apart of something so special and to have been able to visit and watch Mutara grow from being a small orphaned newborn to be the beautiful matriarch of the nursery herd caring for the smaller carves, as she once herself was.
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| Mutara comforting a young calf |
For further information on how you can help return these amazing animals back into the wild and help make a stop to illegal poaching and the ivory trade, please visit
http://www.iworry.org/
or
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/index.asp
For $50 a year you too could get involved!
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| Mutara and I after our visit in 2009 |
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| Mutara on Friday (2013) |
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