B.C. professor given prestigious award for tireless efforts protecting Borneo’s orangutans

Dr Birute Mary Galdikas is a recipient of a prestigious award recognizing those working in the field of exploration and scientific research.

Biruté Mary Galdikas remembers the first time she laid eyes upon an orangutan. It wasn’t in the flesh but via a photograph – one of a subadult male Sumatran, captured peering straight down the barrel of the camera – yet it still stirred something within.

“It was the eyes,” she recalls.

“From the upper lip up, when you looked at him, it was like you were looking at a human being. That’s what intrigued me, the eyes of an orangutan are mesmerizing.”

Few people feel compelled to dedicate their life to caring for an entire species after merely looking upon a photograph, but going against the grain is typical for 79-year-old Galdikas.

An iconic explorers award

In April, the Simon Fraser University professor, scientist and conservationist was bestowed a prestigious award for her unprecedented work researching and protecting orangutans in the dense rainforests of Borneo.

Dedicated to the field of research and scientific exploration, the Explorer’s Club medal for Explorer of the Year is widely regarded as the highest honour of its kind. Past recipients include the likes of Neil Armstrong, James Cameron, and Jane Goodall.

“I was actually surprised… I never thought that I would be nominated for it, or that I would get it,” says the Lithuanian-born, Canadian-raised Galdikas, describing how she is well versed on the club’s array of awards but had never envisioned taking one home, let alone the highest honour.

In an attempt to explain the momentousness of the occasion, Galdikas references a comment Cameron once made about his Explorers Club nod meaning more to him than winning an Oscar. Galdikas’ collection of awards is equally as impressive, they include both an Order of Canada and a PETA humanitarian award, and yet, much like Cameron, she considers her latest trophy to be in a league of its own.

“Virtually everybody who has one is an inspiration,” she says.

“To be in their company, to me, feels like a great honour.”

Over five decades dedicated to the Borneo rainforest

Galdikas first arrived in Indonesia’s Borneo in 1971 as a University of British Columbia and University of California alumna, armed with joint degrees in both psychology and zoology.

It was during such studies that Galdikas had convinced Louis Leakey, mentor to both Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall, to fund and help orchestrate her longed-for excursion.

The famed paleoanthropologist had been hesitant, she recalls. The prospect certainly looked bleak: In the 70s, orangutans in Borneo were largely unknown to the scientific community, and the habitat in which they lived was considered borderline uninhabitable as one of the last wild places on earth.

“Louis gave me 10 years,” says Galdikas with a chuckle.

“He said other people had said it can’t be done, because people had tried to actually locate orangutans down in the wild and couldn’t find them.”

The conservationist didn’t need 10 years. The first orangutan she encountered was in the very first month.

Galdikas worked from her camp in the tropical heath and swamp forests of Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park in the years that would follow, eventually setting up the research site and conservation organization, Orangutan Foundation International, in 1986.

She considers the foundation her greatest accomplishment to date, and the reason why the park is now home to one of the two largest wild orangutan populations in the world. Locals in the Central Kalimantan province, especially the older population, still talk of how Tanjung Puting would not exist if it wasn’t for her work, she says.

“There would be no trees there. It would all be logged. It would all be a palm oil plantation. We protected that park.”

Galdikas says there was “blood, sweat and tears” shed while protecting Tanjung Puting, and she could share stories that would leave even the most seasoned traveller in shock, but she chooses not to linger on those.

“It wasn’t easy,” she remarks, instead.

The first of many life-changing trips

Besides, Galdikas hadn’t been naive to the unforgiving quality of conservation work prior to embarking on her project. Nor the unforgiving quality of the lowland rainforests – Mother Nature had held no cards to her chest during that first ever trip in 1971.

“It rained and it rained and it rained,” she recalls of those first few months.

“There I am, two degrees south of the equator, sitting under an orange tree, pre-dawn, and it’s raining, and I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as cold in my life.”

She remembers the “really horrific” leeches that would wriggle out of her jeans, at one point infecting her legs and hands to such a degree that she was unable to close either of her palms. She remembers the diet of those first few weeks, and the years that came after, consisting of nothing but rice and sardines.

Yet there was a certain serenity to being in the forest that would ultimately will Galdikas’ return, and even now, despite the 4 a.m. rising times, meagre meals and parasitic infections, she describes the rugged island as “basically paradise.”

“I feel very blessed that I’ve had those experiences,” she says now.

When asked whether she had ever considered giving up, trading in her life in the bush for a standard nine-to-five and a return to creature comforts, she doesn’t hesitate before uttering a response.

“There’s never been a moment where I felt discouraged enough to stop,” she says.

She acknowledges it as the reason why her marriage to former husband Rod Brindamour, who had accompanied her to Borneo during that first trip in 1971, would ultimately dissolve eight years into the research project.

“[He] left because he wanted to go back to school, he wanted to finish college, he wanted to have a normal life. He didn’t quite understand that when I said, ‘I’m going to study orangutans as long as I could,’ that I actually intended to do that,” she says.

The justification for prioritizing the great apes is clear, she says. Orangutans – the creatures with eyes that can “look into your soul” – need “all the help they can get.”

Looking to the future

The war is not over but after over half a century of successful conservation efforts, Galdikas says she is starting to feel positive about what the future could hold for the endangered primate.

Earlier this year Indonesia’s Minister of Forestry thanked the conservationist for her service during an intimate encounter that was televised and projected across the country. She describes it as “such an accolade,” and a step towards better collaboration and aid from the Indonesian government.

Developments in methodology and technology are spurring improvements in wildlife monitoring and data collection, she adds, nodding to the work of an SFU student currently observing orangutan populations while studying for her PhD.

“She uses ultraviolet, infrared drones, and so she’s counting orangutans while they’re sleeping in their nests during the night,” she says.

“She’s actually able to count the number of orangutans from the sky, so she’s getting more precise numbers. Before this technology, that was impossible.”

Galdikas, who still splits her time between Canada and Borneo, says she feels optimistic because it “seems like the world is beginning to wake up a little bit” to the fact that if change isn’t made now regarding the way the planet and its inhabitants are treated, “we are going to be in a crisis.”

Avoiding the “path to disaster” is possible, she says, but efforts to raise awareness of the world’s dwindling animal populations need to be ramped up to do so. It’s the reason why Galdikas has no plans to retire any time soon – despite having achieved the highest honour in her field.

“A lot of work still needs to be done,” she says.