Ellie and Lion are proud to be supporting the Swedish based non-profit organisation, Wildhood Foundation. Wildhood raise funds and awareness to strengthen the protection of elephants, rhinos, lions and other endangered species against poaching, trafficking and captivity.

We donate a portion of our sales to help Wildhood protect these threatened species. Wildhood forward 100% of all funds raised to the hands on work in the field, where every life matters.

You can read more on Wildhood Foundation below and find out how your contributions are helping them protect wild animals in some of southern Africa's most targeted areas.

THE FIRST ALL FEMALE ANTI-POACHING UNIT

Akashinga – the world’s first fully armed, all female, anti-poaching unit. These brave women form the first and last line of defense for nature in the area they operate. Their mission is to help protect one of Africa’s biggest remaining elephant populations in the Lower Zambezi valley, Zimbabwe. This is a critical area that have lost 40% of its elephants during the last 16 years, mainly to poaching.
 

Akashinga employ females only, and solely from the local rural communites. The unit favors the most disadvantaged women; previous orphans, victims of serious sexual assault and abuse, and women who have lost custody of their children. By empowering these women, this program does not only protect the unique nature and its wildlife. It also helps build the economy in the community.

A growing body of evidence suggests that empowering women is the single biggest force for positive change in the world today. A women invests up to three times as much of her salary back in her household and family compared to a man. This helps develop the rural communities, reduce poverty, give better access to health care and increase education level as children stay in school longer. A winning concept for both animals and people.



DOG PATROLS

 

In the operations of anti-poaching, dogs are a new and successful tool. Wildhood support the Kilo9 Kennels which operates in South Africa's Greater Kruger area. Here, working dogs are used for 3 main purposes; patrol, detection and tracking.

Patrol dogs walk in the bush with handlers, sweep for snares, carcasses, spoor or any unusual activity. Patrol dogs help rangers in the field to pick up sounds and movement of potential threats. They also do visible patrols on fence lines as a deterrent, to make people aware of the use of dogs in the area.

Detection dogs (sniffer dogs) are trained to sniff out any target that they are trained on. For anti-poaching, it will mostly be gunpowder, ammunition and firearms as well as rhino horn, ivory or other parts of animals. Detection dogs does a massive difference at the reserve gates to smell out firearms going in.

Tracking dogs are used to aid the rangers and ground units in tracking humans or animals. Tracking dogs obviously help the ground units follow spoor faster, to catch up with poachers and apprehend them. They can also be used for tracking rhinos or other animals for monitoring. 

Dogs are one of the most efficient tools in anti-poaching. The anti-poaching operations in Kruger National Park have proved that the input of trained dogs have a big impact on following spoors and making arrests. Dogs do not see color or money, and they do not take bribes. All they want is a “good boy” to play with, a ball and love from the handler.


 

AIR PATROLS
 

Aircraft surveillance is used to prevent poaching mainly by locating animals in large areas. Here, it is crucial to efficiently deploy ground rangers as protection for these animals. Aircrafts are also used in a more aggressive role when following up on actual tracks of poachers and spotting of suspected poachers on the ground. In both situations, having a pair of skilled eyes in the sky makes a big difference to the protection. Wildhoods goal is to help support highly targeted areas with air support, to give extra protection of the threatened species.


 

THE WILDHOOD TEAM

Founder and CEO, Filippa Tarras-Wahlberg has been devoted to conservation since her time working at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Kenya years ago.