Elephant and Rhino adoption
The Audley Africa Safari team sponsors a baby elephant ‘Shimba’ who lost her mother to natural causes when she was six weeks old; and a baby rhino ‘Maxwell’ who was found abandoned when he was just one. Our sponsorship helps the trust to nurture the orphans, pay for the keepers and pay for the upkeep of all the orphans. We also encourage lots of our clients to visit the elephant orphanage when they are transiting through or staying in Nairobi.
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is a charity based in Nairobi National Park who rehabilitate orphaned elephants and black rhinos by nurturing them and allowing them to be part of a human/animal family alongside other orphans and their keepers. The keepers spend 24 hours a day with the elephant orphans, feeding them, playing with them, teaching them and even sleeping in the stable with them. Elephants are affectionate and intelligent creatures that need to have a solid family group around them. Unfortunately this is something that all of the elephants at the orphanage have lost and therefore the rehabilitation scheme revolves around this; socialising them with humans, other orphans and then eventually reintroducing them back into the wild in Tsavo National Park.
The rhino rehabilitation programme runs in a similar way but with several keepers acting as mother figures and with little to no focus on the ‘family’ as rhinos are by nature more solitary. The rhino orphans need a lot of attention and discipline, and can sometimes be rather boisterous! The rhinos are also eventually released back into the wild.
