During the time Robert Carr Hartley served as a Trustee of the Kenya Wildlife Service, he played an important role in decision making of wildlife affairs. His wife, Angela is the daughter of the famous founder Warden of Tsavo East National Park and today both she and Robert are closely involved in the work of The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust which was established in 1977 in memory of her late father. The Trust has been a key conservation player in Kenya's wildlife matters, not least in support of Tsavo and other National Parks, but also for pioneering the hand-rearing and rehabilitation of orphaned infant elephants and black rhinos.

Today, the Trust runs five De-Snaring Teams that constantly work the boundaries and surrounds of the Tsavo National Park, which is the country’s most important Protected Area, sheltering a greater diversity of species than any other Park in the world, since it is within the Park’s boundaries that the Northern and Southern races of fauna merge. The Park is also home to Kenya’s largest single population of elephants and rhinos, and their main hope for a protected future. Together with the desnaring teams The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust runs a mobile veterinary unit, who are able to respond rapidly to cases and relieve suffering caused by snares, spear wounds and anything else for that matter. A vital and important component of the Trust’s De-Snaring anti-poaching work is centred around its community initiative, which involves the support of some five small schools along the Park’s most sensitive community boundaries. All Post Graduate Team Leaders are equipped with Video Projectors and environmental films, plus digital cameras. They interact with the community and the schools, host film shows, encourage sporting activities, the planting of trees and the nurturing of Nature generally, organize guided field trips into the Park for students, all means of engendering a reverence for life and an empathy for animals. The community initiative has brought very rewarding results, especially as the Trust provides text books for its chosen schools, as well as stationery and other much needed items. It has also provided water catchment tanks, and encouraged exchanges with American and European schools, all of which has made a difference to the way the poor indigenous communities view and value their natural wildlife heritage which is a bastion of Kenya’s economy through the Tourist Industry.

 

Visits to the schools to see the Trust’s community initiative can be built into any safari, and help through the generosity of clients reaches the community in full.

For more information about these projects please see:

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