It's Cost $15m - But Willy Still Isn't Free

For two years now, the biggest star in Hollywood history has just wanted to be alone. Holed up in the remote, wind-whipped harbour of Klettsvik, in the Westman Islands off the coast of Iceland, Keiko the killer whale - the five-tonne hero of the 1983 movie Free Willy - has been steadfastly resisting attempts by a team of American conservationists to reintroduce him to a group of fellow orcas in the wild.

More than $15m has been spent on coaxing the former screen star back to his roots - escorting him into the north Atlantic with ships and helicopters, introducing him to pods of orcas and tracking his progress via satellite - but Keiko's future has been thrown into doubt after it emerged yesterday that the American millionaire backing the operation is withdrawing his support. Unless a new source of funding can be found soon, the most expensive project of its type in conservation history could also end up being one of the biggest fiascos.

Craig McCaw, a mobile phone tycoon from the state of Washington, said he would phase out his backing for the $300,000-a-month project, to which he has contributed $10m so far - though his spokesman denied that it was due to a shrinkage in his personal fortune from over $8bn to around $1bn in recent years.

"He's not really an animal person," said Bob Ratliffe. "He cares deeply about Keiko, but he just read in the newspaper that he was dying, so he sent somebody to help out. After two years of solid attempt, if it hasn't happened yet, it's going to become a long-term project that should be funded by an animal care organisation ... we're business people, not animal experts."

Shortly after the second Free Willy movie was released by Warner Brothers, in 1992, Keiko was discovered languishing in a tiny pool in a Mexico City amusement park. Stung by the public relations ramifications, Warner quickly arranged for him to be transported to the United States and thereafter, on a US Air Force cargo plane, to Iceland.

For two summers now, conservationists from Ocean Futures have escorted him on trips into the ocean, allowing him to swim with other orca whales - actually a species of dolphin - for the first time since he was captured at the age of two, 25 years ago, in the waters off Iceland. In February, the group reported that he was thriving in the North Atlantic, and that they were working to develop methods for increasing Keiko's consumption of fresh herring, to wean him off thawed frozen fish as they trained him to eat live fish. For Keiko to join with a pod and migrate with them, Ocean Futures said, the pod would have to accept him - which is where one of the main problems arises.

"He's gone for more than 23 years without living among wild whales, and he has to experiment," said Charles Vinick, executive vice-president of Ocean Futures, which is directed by Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the celebrated explorer and diver Jacques Cousteau. "It's not every pod that will accept him. Some have no interest in him at all; others nudge him and play with him, but they don't bond in any way that allows him to socialise and feed with them."

Not a whale but still a killer

The killer whale, Orcinus orca, is not a whale at all but the largest member of the dolphin family.

Male orcas can grow to 7m (23ft) and weigh 5,000kg, while females can be 6.6m (21ft) and 3,000kg.

While they have never hurt a person in the wild, killer whales are versatile predators, who eat penguins, seals, porpoise and large baleen whales, though their basic diet consists of salmon, cod and squid.

Killer whales mostly live in cooler waters, though they are found in all seas. The largest population seems to be in Antarctica where an estimated 160,000 animals live.

Orcas move in pods, or family groups, and hunt cooperatively, communicating by clicks and squeaks.

Studies suggest they are either "transients," which roam widely in small groups of up to seven, feed predominantly on mammals, communicate infrequently, and are aggressive, or "residents" who form larger pods, of up to 25, feed mainly on fish and vocalise frequently.

Though orcas are generally regarded as too small by commercial whalers, between 1938 and 1967, 1,400 were killed by Norwegians in the northeast Atlantic, while 916 were killed by the Russian fleet during its 1979-80 southern hemisphere whaling season . Only other killer whales, said Mr Vinick, could teach Keiko to hunt for herring the way they do - by rounding up the fish into large groups, whacking them into a daze with their tails, and chugging through them by the hundred. Otherwise, he would starve - or simply go nowhere. "We could release him and leave him, but we don't believe that he would go anywhere," said Mr Vinick. Instead, he would probably try to scrounge from ships moored in nearby harbours.

Now, with vastly reduced funds, reintegration attempts will be scaled down - and might have to be halted altogether, in which case Keiko would probably be kept on a more permanent basis in an Icelandic harbour. "We used helicopters, a large ship, things that really enabled us to spend months out at sea in difficult conditions," said Mr Vinick. "We won't have that same equipment now."

Keiko shot to fame in 1983 when he appeared in the film Free Willy, about a disturbed boy who had formed a friendship with a killer whale facing death. Although mocked at the time as no more than a "damp update of Lassie," the film had an enormous impact on the public's interest in the fate of whales and was described in Time magazine as a "movie that hits every emotional button with a firm fist". It led to a sequel in 1992 which was less successful: Free Willy 2. But over the years there has been continuing public interest in what happened to the film's star. The film coincided with and helped to stimulate the growth in popularity of whale-watching as a tourist attraction on the Californian coast.

However, the methods used to reintroduce Keiko to the wild caused a split in the environmental movement. Richard O'Barry - who used to train the 1960s celebrity dolphin Flipper, but now leads a campaign to free the animals - said the Ocean Futures project was only slightly different to what Keiko underwent at the amusement park from which he had been rescued. "He's back in home waters, instead of on death row in a tank in Mexico," said Mr O'Barry, a marine animals specialist with the World Society for the Pro tection of Animals. "But their method of freeing him, until recently at least, was to train him to become a wild animal again, and that's an impossibility. It's the training itself that is the problem: you have to get out of their way and let nature take its course. Otherwise he's still bonding with the trainers, bonding with the boats."

No killer whale had ever been successfully reintroduced into the wild before, Mr O'Barry said. "You have to face the fact that with Keiko, it may just not be possible."