Boyd Matson | Wild Chronicles

orphan elephants at sheldrick wildlife trust

Are you a cynic, your emotions under lock and key, your heartstrings unplucked.  Do you remain unfazed by either the cute or the less fortunate?  I think I have a cure, a way to break down that wall.  Just spend one afternoon at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya.  Its mission is to take in orphaned elephants, and with humans acting as surrogate mothers, provide the parenting the young elephants need to survive.  If a few hours hanging out with these baby elephants doesn’t leave you as emotional as a teenaged girl at a Justin Bieber concert, then there’s no hope for you.

Saving elephants is not an easy task.  Orphaned elephants have a hard time surviving without their mothers.  Most people thought it impossible for humans to successfully hand raise orphaned baby elephants and then return them to the wild.  But the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is now managing to do the impossible.

In the Sept. issue of National Geographic Magazine photographer Nick Nichols has a major article on the work of the Trust and wonderful photos of the elephants.  This week on my radio show, “National Geographic Weekend”, I talk with Nick about his pictures and how the story of the elephants really got to him.

I visited the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust myself a few months ago, met some of the baby elephants, and did an interview for my radio show with the head keeper Edwin Lusichi.  This is a video of that interview along with footage of some of the elephants.