Orangutan Appeal News

10 Apr 2003 - Tom released

As we travelled out to Sabah in April, I didn’t realise that we were about to make history again!

Our latest project was to relocate an orangutan who had been raiding a nearby village, risking being shot, and was currently being held at Sepilok.

Tom King, was about 28 years old, a full cheek padded, wild born male. Not a happy one at that, as he wanted out!
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1 Mar 2003 - A nurse for the orphan babies

In March 2003 word was received from Sepilok’s Chief Vet saying they had found a suitable candidate for the vacancy of Carer for the very young orphans in the Nursery but the Wildlife Department were unable to provide the funding.
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15 Aug 2002 - Two females released

On August 15th 2002 a team of five appeal members, Sue Sheward, Anne Seviour (Secretary), Lynda and Malcolm Averill (Northern Branch) and Avril Nelson arrived in Sabah, ready to carry out our next Project – the release of two female orangutans into Tabin Reserve.

Tabin is a reserve twice the size of Singapore and where we released King in July 2001. This release was going to be a little bit special as the BBC were filming the whole event for inclusion in their new series Serious Jungle.
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1 Mar 2002 - New night nursery

The team left for Sepilok on 8th March with two tasks at hand, firstly the commissioning of the stainless steel caging for the nursery and secondly the maintenance of the exercise enclosure which we built exactly one year ago.

Arriving at Sepilok was like “coming home”, everyone was so pleased to see us and it only took a glance at the enclosure to realise the maintenance was not happening one day too early. The corrosive weather conditions in Sabah make it essential for equipment to be regularly protected and with such limited resources Sepilok find this an impossible task. Armed with scrappers, paint and brushes our team set about work to remove the old paint, renew the protection coat and apply the final finish, a task that took the team 5 days.
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23 Jul 2001 - Releasing King

The Rehabilitation Centre was buzzing with excitement the day we arrived in Sabah, for it meant King Ghaz, a male orangutan in his prime, would at last be returned to the wild.

For a number of months, King had been confined to a holding cage after he began to display territorial aggression in the area of the reserve surrounding the centre.
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