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Earth Raise 2026

Fourteen years after their reintroduction, orangutans once rescued as orphans are now raising the next generation in the wild.

From 22–29 April, we are taking part in the Big Give’s Earth Raise, a seven day match funding campaign. During this week, every donation made through our campaign page will be doubled, helping us to continue protecting critically endangered orangutans and supporting their future in the wild.

In 2012, a small group of mature orangutans were relocated from Sepilok to the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, a protected forest in Sabah. The aim was to give them the best possible chance of long-term survival in the wild and to better understand how rehabilitated orangutans adapt after release. This work formed part of our long-running post-release monitoring programme.

With the support of our dedicated team and primatologist, the orangutans' progress was carefully monitored in the years that followed. Encouragingly, all of the females introduced to Tabin later gave birth, a strong sign that they had not only survived, but settled successfully into forest life.

Team members preparing to move orangutans from Sepilok to Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

Over time, as the programme came to a close, the orangutans became fully independent and, like all wild orangutans, they moved deeper into the forest.

Otan sitting in the forest with her infant

Recently, our supervisor Lineker returned to the area. While there, he encountered two familiar faces, Eyos and Otan, both from that original group released more than a decade ago.

Now, 14 years on, both females were seen healthy and strong, each caring for a new infant.

Otan and Eyos with their infants in the wild at Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

To see these orangutans once again, living freely in the forest and raising the next generation, is a powerful reminder of what long-term conservation can achieve. The impact of this work does not end at reintroduction and release. It continues years later, in the lives of the orangutans who survive, adapt and reproduce in the wild.

This Earth Raise week (22–29 April), every donation made through our Big Give campaign will be doubled. Your support will help more orangutans have the same chance of a future in the wild.

Double your donation
Eyos at Tabin Wildlife Reserve after reintroduction

Your support helps make stories like this possible - supporting orangutans not just today, but for generations to come.

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