Of the four ex-captive orangutans who were brought to Camp Leakey, three went back to the wild but one chose to stay in the general vicinity of the forest near Camp Leakey until she died many years later. It also cemented Biruté’s role as an active conservationist in the country. The two Generals’ voluntary hand-over of the four adolescent/subadult orangutans to Biruté and the orangutans’ flight back to Borneo on an Air Force plane made headline news in Indonesia. Another General who was also a former beloved Police Chief of Indonesia turned over his three pet Bornean orangutans to Biruté at the same time. Gundul was a former pet of an Indonesian Army General living in Java who gave Gundul to Biruté for rehabilitation and release. The plane brought Biruté, Rod, Biruté’s students, and four ex-pet orangutans from Jakarta (Java) to PangkalanBun (Borneo). It was within the first few weeks of her arrival at Camp Leakey, named in honor of her mentor, that she began the groundbreaking conservation and research work that continues to this day 50 years later.īiruté’s former students (from right clockwise: Barita Oloan Manullang, Endang Sukara, Jatna Supriatna, and Jito Sugarjito) carrying subadult male orangutan “Gundul” from Indonesian Air Force plane. On November 6th 1971 Biruté and her then husband Rod Brindamour finally arrived in what later became Tanjung Puting National Park.
Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey and Biruté all shared a common mentor in Louis Leakey and were later termed the “Trimates.” After visiting Louis in Nairobi, Biruté said goodbye to him for what would be the last time. Her dream finally became a reality.ĭuring the initial journey to Indonesian Borneo in 1971 Biruté visited Jane Goodall at her chimpanzee study site in Africa’s Gombe National Park. After almost three years of waiting, finally in September 1971, Biruté set out for Indonesia and initiated the longest continuous study of any wild orangutan population in the history of science. As a graduate student at UCLA, she approached Louis Leakey and he promised to help her. As a young girl, Biruté Mary Galdikas had a dream that she would go to the forests of Southeast Asia and study the least-known of all the great apes, the elusive Asian orangutan.
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