Listen to Kylie Bullo, TOP's Conservation Project Manager, speak about Temara; the world's first zoo-born orangutan to be released into the wild.
I loved this orangutan like a sister
A few years ago, a zoo keeper from Perth had a ground-breaking idea. Kylie Bullo wanted to try to return an orangutan born in the zoo to the wild - the first time such a thing had been attempted. She'd spent several years working with the great apes, these are the ones with dramatic orange locks, which are native to south-east Asia, and she was confident that she'd found a good candidate to meet the challenge of adapting to life in the Sumatran rainforest. Temara was 11, about the age at which females leave their mothers, and she'd proved herself to be intelligent, independent and curious. Kylie told Jo Fidgen how Temara reacted when she got her first sight of the forest that her grandmother had come from.