Even if you did not know Kirsty personally, she no doubt touched your life. To know the Trust is to know Kirsty. She joined our team ten years ago, working as my right hand and helping build us into the organisation we are today.

Kirsty introduced people the world over to elephants. She preferred working behind the scenes, but her impact was felt everywhere. If you visited the Nursery or contacted the Trust, chances are you met Kirsty. Those who have followed our Nursery livestreams on social media, which she co-hosted, will recognise her warm, welcoming voice. Even the smallest interaction with Kirsty left a lasting imprint.

Kirsty often reflected on this passage by the naturalist Henry Beston:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Kirsty lived by this quote. She saw brilliance in all of earth's creatures — each one was worthy of her respect and her attention. I often found her stooped over a branch, admiring a beetle busily at work, or taking note of the weaver's nesting progress outside her office window. Animals gravitated towards her; they sensed a kindred spirit who moved on a different wavelength than most humans.

Wherever she was, Kirsty was surrounded by a halo of creatures. At the Nursery, the orphaned elephants would often post up beside her, legs crossed and eyes closed in relaxation as they suckled on her finger. Animals felt safe and seen in her presence.

It is easy to understand why: Kirsty was pure of heart and velveteen in kindness. She laughed well and often, washing anyone in her orbit with a wave of goodness. And when the chips were down, you wanted Kirsty in your corner. She was the strongest person I have ever met — not just willing, but wanting, to give a voice to the voiceless and stand up for what was right.

Kirsty was so many things to so many people: she was a loving wife and wonderful mother, a cherished sister, daughter, and granddaughter, and a steadfast friend to so many. She gently and thoughtfully helped me through the terribly sad period of my life when I lost my mother, Daphne. It is heartbreaking to now have to write this tribute for our beautiful girl.

Kirsty was pure light — gentle and poised, yet absolutely unfaltering. She fought so hard to have more time with her daughter, Lyra, who is now just three years old. To have this befall someone so young and so very selfless is impossible to reconcile.

Echoing the words she lived by, Kirsty moved through the world finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. We will miss her terribly, and we feel so blessed to have known her.

– Angela Sheldrick

Kirsty was a fierce champion of our natural world and deeply devoted to all the animals with whom we share our planet. Along with the Trust, these are a few other causes near and dear to her heart — elephants, coral, and donkeys: