Dr. M.F. Khan@Dr_TheHistories
Dr. Biruté Galdikas - the last surviving member of a legendary trio of women scientists that included Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey who were known as "Leakey's Angels" has died at the age of 79. Together, the three reshaped humanity's understanding of our closest animal relatives, the great apes.
When she pored over stories of Goodall's work with chimpanzees and Fossey's research on gorillas while growing up in Toronto, Canada, Galdikas had no idea she'd be joining their ranks. But when she met acclaimed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey during her graduate studies, she told him she wanted to study orangutans in the wild and soon she was setting up a research camp in the harsh rain forests of Indonesian Borneo at just 25 years old.
For the first two months, Galdikas trudged through Borneo's swamps without glimpsing a single orangutan -- battling leeches that clung to her skin, fire ants that swarmed the forest floor, and pit vipers hidden in the undergrowth, all while wading through murky water that sometimes rose to her chest.
Then, on Christmas Eve 1971, a snapping branch high above the canopy drew her gaze upward -- and there, a hundred feet up, sat a mother orangutan with a baby clinging to her shoulder. Galdikas spent the rest of the day tracking the pair, furiously scribbling notes that would mark the start of the longest continuous study of a wild mammal by a single researcher.
Galdikas not only revolutionized our understanding of this little-known primate -- witnessing the first wild orangutan birth and documenting their use of tools -- but she also became a fierce advocate for the protection of the orangutan's rainforest home, which has been devastated by widespread logging and palm oil development. As part of her conservation efforts, she tackled the trade in orangutans as pets and created a center dedicated to rehabilitating captured orangutans with the hope of reintroducing them to the wild.
In 1986, she founded Orangutan Foundation International, which continues to protect orangutans and their rainforest habitat to this day. That work remains as urgent as ever: a century ago, more than 230,000 orangutans roamed the forests of Borneo and Sumatra, but today all three species are critically endangered, with populations that have declined by more than half due to deforestation, the palm oil industry, and illegal poaching.
A professor at Simon Fraser University, Galdikas spent most of the last 55 years living and working in the rainforest. She spoke passionately about the importance of protecting natural spaces until the very end: "Our connection with nature is very basic," she once said. "Without nature humans are lost. That's it."
She made her final trip home to Borneo in December 2024 before returning to Los Angeles, where she was being treated for lung cancer. She continued working from her hospital bed. Her son Fred, who grew up in the rain forest alongside orangutans, has vowed to continue her work. She will be buried in Borneo alongside her second husband.
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