DR. BIRUTÉ MARY GALDIKAS
She did not set out to become a legend. She set out to understand orangutans.
In 1971, at just 25 years old, Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas arrived in the rainforests of Indonesian Borneo at the urging of the great paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Alongside Jane Goodall studying chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with the mountain gorillas, Galdikas became the third of Leakey's legendary Trimates, chosen to unlock the mysteries of our closest living relatives.
She set up camp on the banks of the Sekonyer River, in a place she would call Camp Leakey, and began what would become the longest continuous field study of any wild animal by a single researcher in the history of science.
She never stopped.
For over fifty-four years, Dr. Galdikas devoted her life to the orangutans of Borneo. She studied them, rescued orphaned infants, rehabilitated traumatized adults, and returned hundreds of them to the wild. In 1986, she founded the Orangutan Foundation International, which today protects tens of thousands of acres of precious rainforest and has guided over 500 animals back to freedom. Join OFI and their mission here.
The forests of Borneo are among the oldest on Earth. The orangutans who move through them share 97% of our DNA. Dr. Galdikas understood that protecting them was not simply an act of conservation. It was an act of protecting something ancient in ourselves.
She passed away in March 2026, at 79 years old. Her son Fred carries her mission forward. The forest endures. So does the work.