UPDATE - 21 May 2020: In response to the global coronavirus outbreak our daily public visiting hour, between 11am and 12 noon, has been closed since Saturday 14th March. This was subsequently extended to include the closure of our 'foster parent only' visiting hour between 5pm – 6pm. It is not possible to provide a firm date for the reopening of any visiting to our Nairobi Orphanage. We continue to review the situation, in line with government and health guidance, however, at this time we do not know when we will re-open.
When the situation changes, we will provide details via our website and social media channels. Thank you for your understanding and, so importantly, for your continued support.
Our original notification of the closure to public visiting, announced on 13th March, can be found below.
Closure of Public Visiting to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi.
In response to the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, we will be closing our daily public visiting hour, between 11am and 12 noon, from Saturday 14th March 2020 until Wednesday 1st April 2020– at which time the situation will be reviewed.
This is an entirely precautionary measure, taken in response to public health advice and aimed at supporting wider efforts to limit the spread of the virus.
The decision to close our public visit was not taken lightly, however it is a proactive one for the health and well-being of visitors and the wider community and, importantly, our staff - the latter being paramount in the daily care of the orphans.
These are fast changing and unprecedented times and we are grateful to our supporters, stakeholders and the public for your understanding and we encourage everyone to be vigilant at this time.
In light of this situation and it being ever important to us to keep you - our supporters - close to the projects you make a reality, we will over the coming weeks be bringing you extra live feeds from our Nairobi Nursery, via our Instagram and Facebook accounts. Since you cannot come to us, we will be bring the orphans to you through these videos, including the 11am milk feed and the orphans' bedtime at 5pm; we'll be bringing the Nairobi Nursery herd into your homes around the world.
Look out for the lives feeds streaming on our respective channels, with the first ones taking place this coming Sunday, 15th March. If you are not on Facebook or Instagram, you can still choose to watch them on our social accounts or you can access saved videos of the live streams we will be posting via our social feed.
Please also rest assured that this temporary closure of our public visiting hour does not impact the wider operations of the Trust and our day-to-day field operations continue as normal. Our teams remain fully operational across all of our projects, from the specialist daily care of the orphans, to the treatment of injured wildlife, and the anti-poaching patrols in key habitats to the deployment of aerial units to tackle illegal activity. It is these projects that are saving and nurturing the lives of wild animals every day and we are immensely grateful for your continued support throughout this period so that these conservation projects may press ahead uninterrupted.
