The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation brings its Wildlife Ball to The Dorchester on Friday 27 November 2026, black tie, with an art exhibition, an auction and speakers from the field.
David Shepherd built a career painting African wildlife and then found he could not keep painting animals he was watching disappear. He established the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation in 1984, in response to what he had seen of the trade, and stayed its president until his death in 2017. The charity has put more than £14 million into frontline work across Africa and Asia since, and it still sells art to pay for it.
It funds other organisations’ field operations rather than running its own, so the money reaches ranger units, undercover investigations into the illegal trade, and coexistence programmes where people and wildlife share ground. Eight species carry the work: elephants, tigers, lions, snow leopards, chimpanzees, painted dogs, rhinos and pangolins. Its position is that wildlife crime is a consumer-country problem as much as a poaching one, which is why the investigations run at both ends of the chain.
The 2026 ball is at The Dorchester on Friday 27 November, black tie, with a champagne reception, a three-course dinner, an auction and dancing. Conservationists working in the field speak during the evening, and an exhibition of wildlife art hangs in the room beside the lots. The last ball raised £135,000, and the pictures on the wall are the founder’s method still running: he painted to pay for the work, and the paintings are what pay for it now.