BIRUTÉ GALDIKAS: HER LIFE, WORK AND ORANGUTANS

BIRUTÉ GALDIKAS

Biruté Galdikas is the most well known orangutan researcher. Recruited by Louis Leakey she is to orangutans what Jane Goodall is to chimpanzees and Diane Fossey is to gorillas. The actress Julia Roberts traveled to Borneo to meet her.

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “Galdikas has been living among orangutans since 1971, conducting what has become the world's longest continuous study by one person of a wild mammal. She has done more than anyone to protect orangutans and to help the outside world understand them.” [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

The daughter of Lithuanians who met as refugees in Germany and immigrated first to Canada, then the United States, Galdikas was born in Lithuania and earned a master's degree in anthropology and and PhD at UCLA. She once described herself as one of Louis Leakey's "angels," along with chimpanzee researcher jane Goodall and gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, and said her first meeting with the famous paleontologist was a mystical experience that could have only taken place in Los Angeles, the city of angels. She also described Goodall as being like “Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”, following the yellow brick road with animal companions” and said Diane “was more like the talented but tormented actress who played Dorothy in the film, Judy Garland." Leakey called Galdikas, Goodall and Fossey "trimates." [Source: Washington Post review by Dutch ethologist Frans B. M. de Waal]

Biruté Galdikas’s Time in Borneo

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “The Borneo that greeted Galdikas and her then-husband, photographer Rod Brindamour, was one of the most isolated and mysterious places on earth, an island where headhunting was part of the collective memory of local tribes. To locals, Galdikas was very much an oddity herself. "I started crying the first time I saw Biruté because she looked so strange. She was the first Westerner I'd ever seen!" says Cecep, Camp Leakey's information officer, who was a boy of 3 when he first glimpsed Galdikas 32 years ago. Cecep, who, like many Indonesians, goes by a single name, says he stopped crying only after his mother assured him she was not a hunter: "She's come here to help us." [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

“Galdikas has paid dearly for the life she has chosen. She has endured death threats, near-fatal illnesses and bone-chilling encounters with wild animals. She and Brindamour separated in 1979, and their son, Binti, joined his father in Canada when he was 3 years old. Both parents had worried that Binti was not being properly socialized in Borneo because his best friends were, well, orangutans. Galdikas married a Dayak chief named Pak Bohap and they had two children, Jane and Fred, who spent little time in Indonesia once they were teenagers. "So this hasn't been easy," she says.

Still, she doesn't seem to have many regrets. "To me, a lot of my experiences with orangutans have the overtones of epiphanies, almost religious experiences," she says with a far-off gaze. "Certainly when you are in the forest by yourself it's like being in a parallel universe that most people don't experience."

Biruté Galdikas’s Family Life

Galdikas did her early research with her husband Rod Brindamour. They spent over ten years in the rain forest together and raised a child named Binti at their camp. Binti learned sign language and orangutan behavior from the orangutans; his parents became concerned when he made the same facial expressions and sounds as the orangutans and tried to follow them up into the trees.

During her years in Indonesia, Galdikas left Brindamour for a Dyak farmer. They had two children. Rod in turn had a lover affair with an "Javanese beauty." At on point Rod was so jealous of his wife's involvement with an orangutan he "released" the male far from the camp.

As of the early 2000s, Galdikas was fat, with graying hair and big round glasses. She published books in Indonesian as well as English. and was constantly in hot water with the Indonesian government who told her when she arrived "polite guests in someone's home do not criticize their host." ,

Biruté Galdikas and Her Orangutan Research

Galdikas spent more than 20 years at Tanjung Puting National Park in Borneo studying orangutans. She lived with and studied orangutans, much as Goodall did with chimpanzees and Fossey did with gorillas. The only real difference in their program is that they also helped train orphaned and captive orangutans to fend for themselves in forest like the Adamson's did with Elsie the lion in “Born Free”. Later she switch her focus from science to conservation. She now heads the Orangutan Foundation International, conservation group based in Brentwood California.

Galdikas still spends time at Camp Leakey, her research base and home away from home in Tanjung Puting National Park, a one-million-acre reserve on the southern coast of Borneo managed by the Indonesian government with help from her Orangutan Foundation International (OFI). "Camp Leakey still looks like a primeval Eden," she told Smithsonian magazine. "It's magical."

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “Galdikas has published her findings in four books and dozens of other publications, both scientific and general interest; signed on as a professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia (she spends about half the year in Canada and the United States); and mentored hundreds of aspiring scientists, such as the four students from Scotland's University of Aberdeen who are at Camp Leakey during my visit. Their mission? To collect orangutan feces samples to trace paternity and measure the reproductive success of various males. I ask Galdikas which orangutan riddles she has yet to solve. "For me," she says, "the big, abiding mystery is: How far did the original males travel here in Tanjung Puting, and where did they come from? [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

Critics of Biruté Galdikas

Over the years Galdikas has been criticized on a number of fronts. Other primatologists have criticized her method of reintroducing former captive orangutans to the wild, saying the effort was rarely successful and it risked introducing harmful diseases to the wild population. Wullies Smits, a Dutch botanist who runs another orangutan reintroduction programs, releases his animals where there are no wild orangutans.

The group Earthwatch broke is relation with Galdikas over her lack of publications and her unorthodox methods of orangutan care. Galdikas has been accused of keeping 85 orangutans illegally in her house, allowing teenage caretakers to blow cigarette smoke into the animals faces, leaving sick orangutan in their own feces, and encouraging tourist to abduct animals. Many orangutan under the care of her group lived in poor conditions and have died of infections and neglect. Her young orangutans have a 50 percent infant mortality rate.

Galdikas has been accused of leaving scientific fieldwork to her volunteers and the ignoring their work Smits told Newsweek, "Birute wants to be a mother for orangutan babies. If anybody interferes with those feelings, he's in for a lot of trouble."

Orangutan Party at Biruté Galdikas’s Camp Leakey

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “Darkness is fast approaching at Camp Leakey, the outpost in a Borneo forest that Biruté Mary Galdikas created almost 40 years ago to study orangutans. The scientist stands on the porch of her weathered bungalow and announces, "It's party time!" There will be no gin and tonics at this happy hour in the wilds of Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province. Mugs of lukewarm coffee will have to do. Yes, there's food. But the cardboard boxes of mangoes, guavas and durians — a fleshy tropical fruit with a famously foul smell — are not for us humans. [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

"Oh, there's Kusasi!" Galdikas says, greeting a large orangutan with soulful brown eyes as he emerges from the luxuriant rain forest surrounding the camp. Kusasi stomps onto the porch, reaches into a box of mangoes and carries away three in each powerful hand. Kusasi was Camp Leakey's dominant male until a rival named Tom took charge several years ago. But Kusasi, who weighs in at 300 pounds, can still turn aggressive when he needs to.

"And Princess!" Galdikas says, as another "orang" — noticeably smaller than Kusasi but every bit as imposing, especially to a newcomer like me — teps out of the bush. "Now Princess is really smart," she says. "It takes Princess a while, but if you give her the key she can actually unlock the door to my house." "And Sampson! And Thomas!" Galdikas smiles as these juvenile males bare their teeth and roll around in the dirt, fighting. They are fighting, right? "Noooo, they're just playing," Galdikas tells me. "They are just duplicating how adult males fight. Sampson makes wonderful play faces, doesn't he?"

“No Camp Leakey party would be complete without Tom, the reigning alpha male and Thomas' older brother. Tom helps himself to an entire box of mangoes, reminding Kusasi who's boss. Tom bit Kusasi severely and took control, Galdikas tells me, nodding toward Tom and whispering as if Kusasi might be listening. "Be careful," she says as the new monarch brushes past me on the porch. "He's in a bad mood!" And then, just as suddenly as they appeared, Tom, Kusasi and the gang leave this riverside camp to resume their mostly solitary lives. Galdikas' mood darkens with the sky. "They don't say goodbye. They just melt away," she says, her eyes a bit moist. "They just fade away like old soldier.”

Biruté Galdikas and Orangutan Conservation

Galdikas said her biggest fear is that orangutans will vanish. "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I just clutch my head because the situation is so catastrophic," she told Smithsonian magazine. "I mean, we're right at the edge of extinction."

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, Galdikas has been sounding the "e" word for decades while battling loggers, poachers, gold miners and other intruders into the orangutans' habitat. And now a new foe is posing the most serious threat yet to Asia's great orange apes. Corporations and plantations are rapidly destroying rain forests to plant oil palms, which produce a highly lucrative crop. "Words cannot describe what palm oil companies have done to drive orangutans and other wildlife to near-extinction," Galdikas says. "It's simply horrific." [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

“Tanjung Puting National Park, a one-million-acre reserve Galdikas helped set up, is not fully protected. "If you go eight kilometers north [of the camp], you come into massive palm oil plantations," she says. "They go on forever, hundreds of kilometers." So far, in a bid to outmaneuver oil palm growers, Galdikas' OFI has purchased several hundred acres of peat swamp forest and partnered with a Dayak village to manage 1,000 more.

“Rain forest is cheap — as little as $200 an acre in recent years if it's far from a town. And Galdikas has a key advantage over the palm oil companies: she is trusted by the Dayak community. "People here respect Dr. Biruté as the scientist who devoted her life to fighting to save the orangutans," says Herry Roustaman, a tour guide who heads the local boatmen's association.

"I try not to get depressed, I try not to get burned out," Galdikas told AP. "But when you get up in the air you start gasping in horror; there's nothing but palm oil in an area that used to be plush rain forest. Elsewhere, there's burned-out land, which now extends even within the borders of the park."

Biruté Galdikas’s Zoo

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “Galdikas takes me to see another prized piece of her real estate portfolio, a private zoo just outside Pangkalan Bun that her foundation bought for $30,000. The purchase was a "two-fer," she says, because it enabled her to preserve ten acres of rain forest and shut down a mismanaged zoo that appalled her. "I bought the zoo so I could release all the animals," she says. "There were no orangutans in this zoo. But there were bearcats, gibbons, a proboscis monkey, even six crocodiles." [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

A look of disgust creases her face as we inspect a concrete enclosure where a female Malay honey bear named Desi once lived. "Desi was just covered in mange when I first saw her," Galdikas says. "Her paws were all twisted because she tried to escape once and ten men pounced on her and they never treated the paw. They threw food at her and never went in to clean the cage because they were afraid of her. All she had for water was a small cistern with rain water in it, covered with algae. So I said to myself, 'I have to save this bear. This is just inhuman.'"

Galdikas' Borneo operation employs about 200 men and women, including veterinarians, caregivers, security guards, forest rangers, behavioral enrichment specialists (who seek to improve the physical and mental well-being of the captive orangutans), a feeding staff and eight local blind women who take turns holding the orphaned babies 24 hours a day. "Orangutans like to eat," Galdikas says one morning as she leads two dozen orphaned baby orangutans on a daily romp though the 200-acre care center a few miles outside Pangkalan Bun. "We feed them five times a day at the care center and spend thousands of dollars on mangoes, jackfruits and bananas every month."

Biruté Galdikas’s Orangutan Care Center and Release Area

Bill Brubaker wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “About 330 orphaned orangs live at the 13-year-old center, which has its own animal hospital with laboratory, operating room and medical records office. Most are victims of a double whammy; they lost their forest habitat when gold miners, illegal loggers or palm oil companies cleared it. Then their mothers were killed so the babies could be captured and sold as pets. Most came to Galdikas from local authorities. Kiki, a teenager who was paralyzed from the neck down by a disease in 2004, slept on a four-poster bed in an air-conditioned room and was pushed in a pink, blue and orange wheelchair before she died this year. [Source: Bill Brubaker, Smithsonian magazine, December 2010]

The juveniles will be released when they are between 8 and 10 years of age, or old enough to avoid being prey for clouded leopards. In addition to the fruits, the youngsters are occasionally given packages of store-bought ramen noodles, which they open with gusto. "If you look closely, you'll see each package has a tiny salt packet attached," says Galdikas. The orangutans carefully open the packets and sprinkle salt on their noodles.

Galdikas and I roar down the inky Lamandau River in a rented speedboat, bound for a release camp where she hopes to check up on some of the more than 400 orangutans she has rescued and set free over the years. "The orangutans at the release site we'll be visiting do attack humans," she warns. "In fact, we had an attack against one of our assistants a few days ago. These orangutans are no longer used to human beings."

But when we arrive at the camp, about an hour from Pangkalan Bun, we encounter only a feverish, emaciated male sitting listlessly beside a tree. "That's Jidan," Galdikas says. "We released him here a year and a half ago, and he looks terrible." Galdikas instructs some assistants to take Jidan immediately back to the care center. She sighs. "There's never a dull moment here in Borneo," she says. (Veterinarians later found 16 air rifle pellets under Jidan's skin. The circumstances of the attack have not been determined. After a blood transfusion and rest, Jidan recuperated and was returned to the wild.)

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2024