Adamson was born to Victor and Traute Gessner ( née Greipel) in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary [2] (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three daughters. Her parents died when she was 10, and she went to live with her grandmother. In her autobiography The Searching Spirit, Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me". [ citation needed] We began long-term support for Limbe Wildlife Centre, Cameroon – a respected sanctuary for orphaned chimps, gorillas and other primates with extensive community education programmes.

Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the wild and its inhabitants is increasingly threatened by human development and natural disaster, Adamson's remarkable tale is an idyll, and a model, to return to again and again. A sensitively treated and sumptuously illustrated exploration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for young children.'

We donated funds to support a conservation project protecting Ghana’s last viable chimpanzee population. In addition to Joy Adamson's books about big cats, a book of her artwork was published as an autobiography entitled The Searching Spirit. George Adamson's second autobiography, My Pride and Joy, was published in 1986.

We helped develop a significant chimpanzee sanctuary and education centre on Ngamba Island, Uganda, amid 100 acres of rainforest, where orphan chimps live in a community. New Global Diversity Framework adopted at the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties 15 (CBD COP15). With ENDCAP, we helped authorities develop an EU Policy for Animal Welfare to improve standards for all wild animals in captivity in Europe.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed on 10 December 1948. It was compiled after World War II to declare and protect the rights of all people from all countries. We joined other EU animal welfare organisations to establish the European Alliance to End the Keeping of Dolphins and Whales in Captivity.