It is with extremely heavy hearts that WAN shares the news that Dame Daphne Sheldrick, the remarkable woman who founded The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT), has passed away.
As per her daughter Angela, Daphne, dedicated more than 60 years of her life to the protection of Africa’s wildlife and some of the world’s most iconic and threatened animals, passed away last night after a long battle with breast cancer.
“It is all very raw but I must share with you the passing of my incredible mother Daphne Sheldrick. What an example she was to us all, and I feel blessed to have been able to call her my Mum because she was quite simply ‘one of a kind’. She was a national treasure and a conservation icon,” Angela said in a statement on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website. “Her legacy is immeasurable and her passing will reverberate far and wide because the difference she has made for conservation in Kenya is unparalleled.”
Born in Kenya in 1934, “Daphne spent close to 30 years of her life working alongside her husband David, the founder warden of Kenya’s largest National Park, Tsavo East, as they forged this unforgiving wild land into a protected space for Kenya’s largest elephant population and all manner of wild species.”
Daphne became a leading voice for elephants, and other wild animals, that she believed “have the right to live a free and protected life, just like us.”
