We are extremely pleased to announce that the beautiful Eyos has taken her final step back to the wild. This is the highest accolade for a rehabilitated orangutan to be returned to the true wild where there will be no human interference.

We received an update on Eyos and progress since her release from our Primatologist, James Robins, on 18 March…

“As part of our post-release monitoring programme, on March 1st we released the beautiful Eyos into Tabin. We chose her because she was getting bullied by many of the other females at Sepilok and she clearly needed her own space to live away from other orangutans.

Before we released her, we implanted her with a radio telemetry transmitter so that my team and I can maintain regular contact with her over the next couple of years. She is the first of six orangutans that we are releasing into Tabin this year. Just last week we also released Oscar and Hope. All three animals are now being tracked by my dedicated team and I. We work 13hr days in the forest following every move of each of the released orangutans on our programme.

Eyos is feeding really well so far, and has managed to find plenty of fruits on the higher ground in the south of our release site. She has even had some interaction with a wild male orangutan whom she approached last week. After a bit of a standoff that lasted a couple of hours, she got bored and moved on with her day! Eyos is old enough now to be a mother so over the next couple of years, with any luck, we may be reporting news of her getting pregnant with the help of a wild male orangutan!”

Here are a couple of photos of her in action; one of her taking a rest on her way to a new feeding patch, and another of her watching us watch her from up in the trees.

We look forward to bringing you further news about her progress in the future.