Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Updated: January 2024

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers sent to your browser by a website you visit and is stored by your browser. It allows the website or a third-party to recognise you and make your next visit easier and the website more useful to you.

Cookies can be “persistent” or “session” cookies. Persistent cookies remain on your personal computer or mobile device when you go offline, while session cookies are deleted as soon as you close your web browser.

How the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust uses cookies

When you use and access the website, we may place a number of cookies in your web browser.

We use the following cookies:

Essential cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to use a shopping cart or make donations.

Performance (analytical) cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

Functionality cookies. These remember choices you make to improve your online experience, such as recently viewed pages.

Third party cookies. We also use some tools on our pages from third parties such as YouTube (for tracking usage statistics for YouTube videos embedded on our website) and Google (Google Tag Manager – to track user journeys and actions on our website). They also set cookies on our website(s) on its behalf in order to deliver the services that they are providing. These cookies are placed on our website, and may collect information about your online behaviour, such as your IP address, the website you arrived from, and what actions you take on our website. If you would like more information about the cookies used by these suppliers, as well as information on how to opt-out, please see their individual privacy policies.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use, the purpose for which we use it, and the duration of each cookie below:

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Name of cookie: _dswt_session

Purpose: Used to authenticate the user and allow access to their account area

Duration: 30 days

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Name of cookie: YSC

Purpose: Used by YouTube (Google) for storing user preferences and other unspecified purposes - https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

Duration: session

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Name of cookie: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE

Purpose: Used by YouTube, a Google-owned platform, this cookie measures bandwidth, determining whether the user gets the new or old player interface.

Duration: 6 months

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Name of cookie: CONSENT

Purpose: Used by YouTube, a Google-owned platform. YouTube sets this cookie via embedded YouTube videos and registers anonymous statistical data.

Duration: 2 years

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Name of cookie: rack.session

Purpose: Session management, by default expires in 30 days, unless persistent sessions is disabled

Duration: 30 days

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Name of cookie: _dswt_current_currency

Purpose: Track the currency being used for the user, allows switching currencies in development

Duration: session

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Name of cookie: _dswt_order_token

Purpose: Find a user’s most recent order each time they return to the site

Duration: 1 year

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Name of cookie: _dswt_site_id

Purpose: Sets a user to a particular site (Global / USA / UK / Europe) to help ensure they are delivered the most pertinent information

Duration: session

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Name of cookie: _dswt_completed_order_token

Purpose: When an order completes, we store a reference to its token so that the ‘complete’ stage can be displayed

Duration: session

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Name of cookie: _cfduid

Purpose: Used by CloudFlare to identify trusted web traffic. It does not correspond to any user id in the web application, nor does the cookie store any personally identifiable information

Duration: 2 years

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Name of cookie: ­_ga

Purpose: Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors. (all information is anonymous)

Duration: 2 years

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Name of cookie: ­_ga_*

Purpose: Google Analytics sets this cookie to store and count page views.

Duration: 2 years

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Name of cookie: _gat

Purpose: Tracking cookie for Google analytics. Used to throttle request rate

Duration: 10 mins

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Name of cookie: _gat_UA-*

Purpose: Google Analytics sets this cookie for user behaviour tracking.

Duration: 1 minute

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Name of cookie: _gid

Purpose: Google Analytics sets this cookie to store information on how visitors use a website while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the collected data includes the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.

Duration: session

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Name of cookie: _hjFirstSeen

Purpose: Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores the true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user.

Duration: 1 hour

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Name of cookie: _hjSessionUser_*

Purpose: Hotjar sets this cookie to ensure data from subsequent visits to the same site is attributed to the same user ID, which persists in the Hotjar User ID, which is unique to that site.

Duration: 1 year

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Name of cookie: _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress

Purpose: Hotjar sets this cookie to detect a user's first pageview session, which is a True/False flag set by the cookie.

Duration: 1 hour

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Name of cookie: _hjSession_*

Purpose: Hotjar sets this cookie to ensure data from subsequent visits to the same site is attributed to the same user ID, which persists in the Hotjar User ID, which is unique to that site.

Duration: 1 hour

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How to manage cookies

If you wish to restrict, block or delete the cookies which are set by our website, or any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. How you do so will depend on the browser you use, but the Help function within your browser should tell you how. You can also set your browser to notify you each time new cookies are placed on your computer or other device.

However, if you use your browser settings to delete or block cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our website and some pages may not display properly.

More about cookies

You can learn more about cookies on the following website: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ 

Changes to our cookie policy

We may update our use of cookies from time to time and consequently we may update this policy. We recommend that you check this policy regularly.