Daily Telegraph - 28 Jun 2014 -  DELIA CRAIG, who has died aged 90, was born into a family of colonial farmers in Kenya and chose to stay on after the country became independent; on their vast estate on the Lewa Downs in the shadow of Mount Kenya, she and her husband David grew wheat and raised cattle, sheep – and rhinos.

What became known as the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, now listed as part of a World Heritage Site by Unesco, started life in 1983, when David and Delia Craig were approached by the conservationist Anna Merz and agreed to set aside 5,000 acres of their ranch for conversion into a rhino sanctuary. The Craigs and Anna Merz then set to work, recruiting game-trackers, bush pilots, veterinarians and others to round up animals; and for the next few years they tracked, captured and relocated to the refuge every remaining wild rhino in northern Kenya for breeding and safe-keeping.

Despite pressure from poachers, the programme was so successful that eventually the Craigs decided to dedicate their entire ranch to conservation. By 1994, the whole of Lewa Downs, as well as the government-owned Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve, had been enclosed, creating a 61,000-acre rhino sanctuary. It is now home to 10 per cent of Kenya’s black-rhino population and 14 per cent of its white-rhino population (as well as the world’s largest population of Grevy’s zebra) raising hopes that the animals might one day return to their former dominance in northern Kenya.

The Lewa Conservancy became a major tourist attraction, visited by, among others, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, who famously proposed to his then girlfriend, Kate Middleton, there in 2010.

One of the keys to the Craigs’ success was getting local Masai communities involved, through direct employment and with financial assistance for education, health care support, water and agricultural projects. In 2001, Delia (affectionately known as Mama) and her son Ian established the Lewa Education Trust, which supports local primary schools, awards bursaries for local children to attend secondary school and university, and funds courses for local teachers.

Royal Aero Club certificate 24 Jan 1949