Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in the Malaysian Sabah District of North Borneo was established in 1964, to restore vagrant orangutans. The site is 43 sq km of secured area at the edge of Kabili Sepilok Forest Reserve. Today around 60 to 80 orangutans are sans living in the store.

At the point when Sabah turned into an autonomous state in Malaysia in 1963, a Game Branch was made in the Forest Department for the preservation of wild creatures in the area.

Thus, 43 sq km of secured area at the edge of Kabili Sepilok Forest Reserve was transformed into a recovery site for orangutans, and an inside worked to tend to the gorillas. Today around 25 youthful stranded orangutans are housed in the nurseries, notwithstanding those free in the store.

The office gives medicinal consideration to stranded and seized orangutans and in addition many other natural life species. A percentage of alternate creatures which have been dealt with at the inside incorporate; sun bears, gibbons, Sumatran rhinos and elephants.

As of late restored people have their eating routine supplemented by every day feedings of milk and bananas. The extra nourishment supplied by the middle is deliberately intended to be dull and exhausting in order to urge the gorillas to begin to rummage for themselves.

Sepilok is considered by the Wildlife Department to be a helpful instructive apparatus with which to teach both local people and guests alike, yet they are resolute that the training must not meddle with the recovery process. Guests are limited to walkways and are not permitted to approach or handle the primates.

In the wild orangutan babies stay with their moms for up to six years while they are taught the abilities they have to get by in the woodland, the most essential of which is climbing. At Sepilok an amigo framework is utilized to supplant a mother’s instructing. A more youthful chimp will be combined up with a more seasoned one to offer them to add to the abilities they some assistance with needing.

The formation of store zones minimizes the effect of deforestation on orangutans and far less youthful chimps turn into the casualty of the unlawful pet exchange as an aftereffect of these ‘havens’. Children are regularly discovered amid logging or timberland leeway or caught by poachers who butcher the grown-up gorillas to contact them. The Malaysian Government has cinched down on illicit exchanging, banning all such practice and forcing jail sentences on anybody discovered keeping them as pets.

Adolescents kept in bondage regularly get to be debilitated or endure disregard which now and again reaches out to mercilessness. Whilst a percentage of the orangutans raised as pets can never be come back to the wild, others can be restored; it is a long and costly process, taking up to seven years however one focuses, for example, Sepilok tackle without inquiry.

Getting There

From Sandakan: There are five public buses which come directly to Sepilok (at  9:00am, 10:30am 11:30am, 1:00pm and 2:00pm) and five returning back to Sandakan (at 10:30am, 11:30am, 12:30pm, 2:00pm and 4:00pm). The bus journey takes 45 minutes and costs 4RM per person.  Many of the hotels nearby can also arrange a shuttle service and it is very easy to take a taxi too.

From Kota Kinabalu: The journey takes 5 hours by bus stopping at junction ‘Jalan Sepilok’, a 2.5 km walk from the centre.  However, there are frequent flights from KK to Sandakan which take approx. 45 minutes with return prices starting from as little £20 GBP.