Young Randy has been given a second chance to learn the ways of the wild through our groundbreaking surrogacy programme, which has successfully partnered him with Seponti.
When Randy was rescued in 2025 by our frontline partners, YIARI, in collaboration with BKSDA West Kalimantan, he was just two years old and being kept in a tiny cage in an illegal gold mining area.
He was weak, undernourished and living in shocking conditions, with barely enough room to turn around. He was being fed scraps of banana and bread, and vets also found evidence of earlier trauma in the form of a healed leg fracture.
Veterinarian drh. Ishma, who accompanied the rescue team and carried out the preliminary assessment of Randy, said:
“We found a fracture on his left thigh that has started to heal, possibly because this injury occurred more than four weeks ago. This indicates that before being kept, he likely experienced a fairly serious traumatic event.”
Quick intervention was deemed essential due to the high risk of stress, malnutrition and infectious disease in infant orangutans kept in unsuitable environments.
Since his rescue, Randy has been going from strength to strength, receiving expert care and rehabilitation at our centre in West Kalimantan. So much so, he was selected as an ideal candidate to join our surrogacy programme – with the aim of eventually releasing him back into the wild.
Over the past couple of months, Randy has been getting to know his surrogate mother, Seponti, who was herself rescued as an orphan in 2015. Their bond has grown steadily, and Seponti is already showing encouraging signs of accepting Randy as her own by carrying him and being protective of him.
The pair were introduced through carefully managed introduction sessions in an enclosure, allowing them to build trust in a safe and controlled environment. In the coming months, they’ll progress to spending time together in the protected forest, in preparation for a potential release into the wild together, all being well. This is a significant milestone in Randy’s rehabilitation – as indeed it is for Seponti, who seems to be thriving in her new nurturing role. We look forward to bringing further news of both orangutans being given a second chance at freedom in the future. We are incredibly grateful to all our supporters for making this possible.
You can still support Randy and other infants like him through our orphaned orangutans appeal: https://www.internationalanimalrescue.org/appeal/orphaned-orangutans