Dame Daphne Sheldrick, photographed at her elephant nursery in Nairobi National Park, where numbers had swelled ominously with victims of ivory poaching and human conflict.

For decades an alarming escalation in elephant orphans has been the sad consequence of the explosion in ivory poaching and increasing human conflict. Would-be rescue efforts were usually in vain, as cow’s milk derivatives proved a death sentence for unweaned calves, causing serious digestive upsets.

Then, in 1987 after a 28 year search, Daphne Sheldrick discovered a formula that closely resembled elephant milk.

Today Daphne’s legacy, the world’s leading centre for the rescue, rehabilitation and re-wilding of elephant orphans - just one of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s many projects - has successfully raised more than 260 elephant, rhino’ and other orphans.

A seven-month-old female orphan gives her carer an elephant ‘kiss’. The orphans and keepers are totally devoted to each other.

Two of the young orphans indulge in rumbustious play with their keeper.

Over the last 100 years around 90% of Africa’s elephants have been killed, most for their tusks.

For her morning nap a two-month-old orphan is tucked under a blanket by her keeper.

In Tsavo East National Park the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has established a ‘fledgling’ herd of orphans learning to survive in the wild. In the early morning 7-year-old ‘matriarch’, Emily, leads her ‘herd’ into the bush.

A sunken-cheeked, traumatised and dehydrated orphan is given life-saving milk and 24-hour care to ensure its survival.

At the orphan nursery she founded at Nairobi National Park Daphne Sheldrick gives a 7-month-old orphan ‘rhino his "bottle".

Tired out and tucked in, a 5-month-old orphan is comforted by her dedicated 24-hour carer at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust nursery. This young elephant was traumatized when poachers killed her mother.

‘Mud, mud, glorious mud!’ Dame Daphne Sheldrick’s elephant orphans enjoy an invigorating wallow at Nairobi National Park.

At the orphan nursery she founded at Nairobi National Park, Dame Daphne Sheldrick checks on some of her 13 elephant orphans.

Kenya Wildlife Service anti-poaching rangers on patrol in Tsavo East National park.

Now, each year, more elephants are lost to poaching than are born.

One of Sheldrick Wildlife Trust carers gets a trunk "cuddle" from two of the older orphans.

At 6pm each evening a little pachyderm procession emerges from the scrub and makes its way to each individual stable, strewn with thick, fresh hay, safe from lions and leopards that prowl nearby. After another feed of milk the calves curl up besides their favourite carer, each tucked warmly under a blanket until morning when, once again, the little cavalcade makes its way into the bush in the dawn sunshine.

As part of the re-wilding program, in Tsavo East National Park and in the proximity of wild elephants, three ‘graduates’ from the elephant nursery wrestle and play in the shade.

In the wilds of Tsavo East National Park (where older orphans are sent once they are weaned) a carer reassures one of the young bulls.

In the evening, after a day in the bush at Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, meeting wild elephants and learning to survive in the bush, one of the team’s dedicated carers leads their young matriarch and the rest of the orphan herd back to their protective night stockade.