Anna Merz

Anna Merz ( Hepburn; 17 November 1931 – 4 April 2013) was an English conservationist who established the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary (now the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy) in 1983. She postponed her retirement in Kenya in 1976 to take up the task of saving black rhinoceroses from poachers wanting to slaughter them for their horns. In 1990, Merz was named to the Global 500 Roll of Honour by the United Nations Environment Programme. Following her death, a female rhinoceros calf was named Anna after her and two fictional books about Merz and a rhinoceros named Samia were published in the late 2010s.

Early life On 17 November 1931, Florence Ann Hepburn was born in Radlett, Hertfordshire, England, close to London, As a child, she relocated between London and Cornwall during the Second World War. Merz was sent to a boarding school in Dorset with a farm and then to St Margaret's in Bushey. She resented St Margaret's and its underground air raid shelters;

Career She travelled extensively around the world. recruited spies for information of poachers and purchased a plane for surveillance. She served on the board of both the International Rhino Foundation and the IUCN Asian Rhino Specialist Group. A memorial service was held for her at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy on 12 May 2013. In 2019, an illustrated fictional book detailing how Merz rescued and looked after Samia in the rhinoceros' formative years called Anna & Samia: The True Story of Saving a Black Rhino was written by Paul Meisel.