The world leading wildlife artist, whose one and only ambition was to be a game warden, has died. The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation yesterday said in a statement its founder and president, David Shepherd, had died peacefully after a 10-week battle with Parkinsons Disease in hospital.
With great sadness that we announce the death of wildlife artist and conservationist David Shepherd, FRSA, CBE, founder and president of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation,it said.
Born in 1931, Shepherd said he was an extrovert who enjoyed talking and liked to be known as a natural promoter and an ardent ambassador for conservation.
He said he came rushing to Kenya after finishing education with the incredibly arrogant idea. It was a disaster. I knocked on the door of the Head Game Warden in Nairobi and said:
But to his face, Shepherd was told you are not wanted.
My life was in ruins. That was the end of my career in three seconds flat,he says in his biography. Dejected and homesick, he took a job as a receptionist in a hotel at the Kenyan coast he was paid one pound a week.
Shepherd would later go back to England penniless, with only two choices to take up be an artist or a bus driver. The foundation said he dedicated his life to protecting some of the world most iconic and endangered animals for more than 50 years.
David dedicated using his talent as an artist to generate funds for their protection. He inspired hundreds of others to follow and, in 1984, established his own wildlife foundation to give something back to the animals that had given him so much success as an artist, the foundation said.
The foundation was voted in a BBC poll as one of the most effective and popular small wildlife charities in Britain. It is a flexible non-bureaucratic NGO funding projects dedicated to the long-term conservation of critically endangered mammals in the wild.
Shepherd was also honored for his war on wildlife crime through training and supporting those on the front line, and engaging and benefiting rural people who share their environment.