The efforts to return Keiko to the wild essentially started in 1993, shortly after the orca starred in the family film, Free Willy. That's when millions of people learned the truth about the killer whale's captivity in Mexico City, where the movie was shot. The irony of Keiko's living conditions was not lost on fans of the film about freeing a captive whale.

For ten years after the debut of Free Willy, until Keiko unexpectedly died in 2003, the orca made many strides, large and small, toward rejoining the wild from which he was captured in 1979. He was moved from Mexico City to a multi-million-dollar facility in Oregon to Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland, where he spent nearly four years re-learning the behaviors of a wild orca. In the summer of 2002, he traveled nearly 900 miles to Norway, where he resided in a fjord until he died in December 2003, apparently from pneumonia.

The Keiko Project was unlike any previous wildlife rehabilitation project. No one had ever attempted to reintroduce a whale to the wild after such a long period of captivity. Because of its enormity, the project had many important benefactors, supporters, and caretakers: Earth Island Institute, the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation, Warner Bros., Oregon Coast Aquarium, Craig McCaw, the Wendy P. McCaw Foundation, Ocean Futures Society, and The HSUS.

The HSUS was a prominent engineer of Keiko's road to freedom. We were significantly involved in moving him from his abysmal conditions in Mexico City to his state-of-the-art facility at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and we supported Ocean Futures, which managed the Keiko Project in Iceland. We also actively cooperated with the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation in Norway.

In this section, you can re-trace the steps that Keiko took during his ten-year campaign toward freedom. You can also learn more about wildlife rehabilitation and release, and about why The HSUS became involved in the Keiko Project in the first place. Keiko unfortunately died before he could rejoin a pod, but in many ways, the animal was free for the last few years of his life. He lived under conditions in which he could freely wander the open ocean and resume his wild ways if he so chose. He no doubt lived longer because of these conditions.

But more than that, Keiko's many accomplishments will benefit others who will attempt similar freedom campaigns in the future. For that alone, he can rest in peace.