Natalie Kyriacou Inspiring curiosity

For several months, Natalie Kyriacou woke up in stifling heat and humidity each day. She was living in a small guest house backing onto one of the few remaining tracks of protected rainforest in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

A journalism student at the time, Kyriacou travelled to the Bornean jungle to work on an orangutan rehabilitation project, hoping to learn more about the challenges facing some of the world’s most iconic species and to write about the impact palm oil was having on wildlife in the region.

Each day, she bottle-fed infant orangutans, sourced food and enrichment for local wildlife, taught juvenile orangutans to climb trees and monitored wild nest populations, all while wrapping up the final semester of her university degree. It was a life-changing experience, but not one Kyriacou necessarily recommends today.

While she feels very fortunate to have had such a unique experience, she believes handling wildlife isn’t something anybody should strive towards. “It’s an indicator that we, as humanity, have meddled too much,” she says. “There is nothing more beautiful than hearing and witnessing truly wild