Forestry Minister: Birute Galdikas a Key Figure in Global Orangutan Conservation

Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni remembers Prof. Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas as an important and meritorious figure in global orangutan conservation efforts. “On behalf of the Ministry of Forestry, I extend my deepest condolences on the passing of Mrs Birute. Indonesia has lost one of its finest daughters who worked tirelessly in silence for decades in the remote forests of Central Kalimantan to conserve orangutan habitats,” the Minister stated in Jakarta on Wednesday. The anthropologist Birute Galdikas, one of the world’s leading orangutan researchers, was reported to have died at the age of 79. Minister Raja Antoni said that, based on a message from Galdikas’s son Fred, the anthropologist breathed her last in Los Angeles, United States. “If today you see the beautiful and well-preserved Tanjung Puting National Park with orangutans that leave you in awe, you will find the unseen footprints and handprints of a woman with a steely heart… high commitment, besides the old wooden house she built in the early 1970s,” he said. Due to her love for orangutans and the land of Kalimantan, Birute Galdikas instructed her son to have her laid to rest in Central Kalimantan. “Fred even conveyed Mrs Birute’s will that if she were to die, she wanted to be buried in Dayak land in Central Kalimantan, close to the grave of her husband, a Dayak who had passed away earlier,” said the Minister. Birute Galdikas was a primatologist, environmental conservation activist, and author of several books on the threats of orangutan extinction, particularly Bornean orangutans. She is known as a leading figure in modern primate research, especially orangutans, and received the Kalpataru award from the Indonesian Government for her efforts in nature conservation.