Born to Be Wild 3D

On release now at IMAX cinemas.

How did you get involved with elephants?

I grew up on a highland farm in Kenya. We had a lot of wild orphan animals because in those days wild animals were everywhere. I married into the wildlife service and lived in Tsavo National Park, where wild orphans started coming in — buffalo, rhinos and elephants. The elephants were a huge challenge: nobody had managed to raise a newborn calf. My husband thought it was impossible. Eventually I managed to keep one alive for six months, having lost many others. We knew we were on the right track.

Daphne Sheldrick with one of her early charges. Credit: DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST (http://WWW. SHELDRICKWILDLIFETRUST. ORG)

Why are elephants so challenging to rear?

The milk formula is very special. So is the husbandry. It took 28 years of trial and error to get both about right. We knew that elephants' milk was high in fat. We added extra cream and butter to cows' milk, but then we learned that the elephants lived a lot longer on skimmed milk. So we scouted around the shops to try to find infant human formula that contained vegetable fat instead — the nearest thing to the fat in elephants' milk is coconut fat. With this mix, we have now managed to raise 130 elephants, which are still living today, some with their own young.

How do these animals become orphaned?

Elephants are fragile in infancy. In a perfect world they would not have any enemies, but the growing human population is taking up more and more land that was once used for elephant migration routes. An elephant does not know the difference between grass and maize [corn] and can eat a human's livelihood in an afternoon. And the demand in the Far East for ivory has grown tremendously in the past few years. The only hope for elephants is to ban all trade in ivory.

Have you shared your methods?

We have tried to. We are contacted by people from all over Africa, but raising elephants is a long-term thing. They are with you for up to 10 years, sometimes longer. They need 24-hour care and feeding every 3 hours, day and night. They are milk-dependent for 3 years. You have got to have the staying power to see the project through. I've been working with elephants for 50 years — that's most of my life.

How do you return hand-raised elephants to the wild?

They are one of the easiest species to return; it just takes a long time. It isn't a question of getting an animal to two or three years old and tipping it out in the bush. They go to the rehabilitation stations in Tsavo with their human family until they have made friends in the wild herds. They are introduced to the wild herds by other now-integrated orphans. No elephant we have raised has been unable to go wild in the fullness of time.

What does the future hold for elephants in Africa?

The elephant population in Africa will fall to a much lower level as the human population rises. But the absence of elephants has a big impact. They create the water holes and the trails that lead to them; they turn thick unproductive scrubland into productive grassland; they walk enormous distances and distribute seeds in their dung. Without the elephant you lose lots of other animals.

What do you hope people will take away from Born to be Wild 3D

Everyone that sees it cannot fail to go home having learned a lot about elephants — how caring and nurturing they are and how magnificent they are to one another. Elephants can provide lots of lessons for humans.