Wildlife Charities

Touch a Monkey's Heart Foundation

Touch a Monkey's Heart Foundation aims for guests to leave the sanctuary with a greater understanding of the primates of the World and the threats they are facing. One of their main goals is to educate the public about the adverse effects of keeping primates as pets, in terms of both physical and psychological health.Also important is the rapid decline of natural habitats due to logging, mining, agriculture and human settlements. We encourage the visiting public to buy goods wisely, ranging from second-hand or antique wood-products, to pharmaceuticals and cosmetics that were not tested on animals.

The sanctuary ensures the futures of all its primates are secured. The sanctuary is funded by means of responsible eco-tourism and we strive to achieve an effective balance between conservation and economic reality.

Wildlife SOS (WSOS)

Wildlife S.O.S (WSOS) was founded in 1998 by Geeta Seshamani and Kartick Satyanarayan to initiate urgent action to curb wildlife crime and help wildlife in distress.

One of Wildlife S.O.S's land mark projects is to strive to bring an end to the age old brutal practice of 'dancing bears' in India. There are many sad stories of the poaching of tiny week old cubs, brutal killing of the mother, trafficking of bear cubs only so they could be brutalized with excruciatingly cruel and painful training methods. It is indeed a shameful exploitation of wildlife to see these shy creatures of the forests stripped of all their dignity and wild behaviour being made to jump up and down in pain with a stick and the flicking of a rope.

The baby bears undergo the utmost trauma when they are transported from one underground wildlife market to another till they reach the Kalandar villages where they are trained for their short and brutal life as a 'dancing bears'. As they grow up, their teeth are knocked out with a metal rod; male cubs are castrated using crude methods without anaesthesia, claws chopped off and a red hot iron needle is forced through their delicate soft muzzle, through which a thick coarse rope is thrust. This wound is not allowed to heal, so that when the rope is pulled, the bear jumps up in pain making it appear like the bear is 'dancing', much to the amusement and entertainment of tourists who are ignorant to the truth. They often pay the Kalandar, thereby unwittingly encouraging him. The bear's life is spent tethered to a four foot long rope and with a severely deprived diet.

Set in the pristine wilderness of the Sur Sarovar Bird Sanctuary, the Agra Bear Rescue Facility is home to over 200 bears rescued from the 'Dancing Bear' trade where these bears are given the best of medical treatment and care and they all now spend their time playing and having fun and living their lives the way they should be?as bears and not objects of entertainment!

The donation from TASWA Challenge will help us build our education centre in Agra and support our education programme to sensitise children, tourists and the public to the illegal crimes taking place involving dancing bears all over India.

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT)

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) was setup in 1977 by Dr Dame Daphne Sheldrick, in memory of her late husband David, the famous naturalist and founder warden of Kenya's largest National Park, Tsavo.

The DSWT is dedicated to the protection, conservation and preservation of all wildlife and natural habitats in Kenya, with a particular focus on Tsavo National Park. The charity is best known for its work in the rescue, hand rearing and wild release of orphaned elephants and rhinos.>Too frequently these orphans are the innocent victims of poaching and human wildlife conflict, claiming the lives of their mothers and leaving them alone and unable to survive.

Orphaned elephants under the age of two years are brought to the DSWT's Nairobi Nursery, where they spend 24 hours a day with their surrogate mothers! the keepers that run the orphanage. Requiring milk feeds every three hours, the keepers are always with their charges, including sleeping with them in their night stables and by day, keepers and orphans spend their time together out in the bush. On reaching two years of age, orphans are moved to one of two reintegration centres run by the DSWT in Tsavo National Park, where they begin to integrate with wild elephants, until such time as the orphans choose to leave the orphanage and return to the wild where they belong. Dame Daphne Sheldrick has been working with orphaned wildlife since the 1950s and was the first person in the world to successfully hand rear milk dependent baby elephants and rhinos. Since 1987 the DSWT has successfully raised more than 70 orphaned elephants and 13 black rhinos.

As well as its orphans' project, the DSWT undertakes other front line wildlife protection projects; these include operating seven fully mobile antipoaching teams, two mobile field veterinary units and a plethora of community outreach projects targeting poorer communities bordering Nairobi and Tsavo National Parks. Through this series of operations the DSWT is not only saving the lives of thousands of wild animals every year, often from slow and painful deaths in the grasp of a snare, but also helping wildlife of the future and today?s children, by undertaking a series of educational programmes highlighting the importance of Kenya?s wildlife and the need to protect it.