Author: Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas

Passing of OFI Board Member and Hollywood Legend: Norman Lear

Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) is greatly saddened by the passing of Norman Lear, a legendary television and film producer and writer, as well as longtime friend of OFI. Norman was 101 years old when he died at home on December 5, 2023. We extend our deepest sympathies to his family and loved ones. Several years… Continue reading Passing of OFI Board Member and Hollywood Legend: Norman Lear

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Fall Appeal 2023

Dear Friends of OFI, The babies need our help! Each day, thousands of acres of tropical rain forests are clear‐cut, burned, and reduced to ash. The scorched earth, once home to variegated wildlife, becomes a deafeningly silent monoculture plantation. Wild orangutans who once roamed these now stricken ashen landscapes are starving, their deaths often carried… Continue reading Fall Appeal 2023

Fall – Winter Appeal 2022

For the last 51 years, Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) has been working to save orangutans and their endangered tropical rain forest habitat. Without forest, wild orangutans cannot survive. During the past years we have made tremendous progress protecting wild populations of orangutans and forests in Borneo. But it is not enough! Unfortunately, in many ways… Continue reading Fall – Winter Appeal 2022

Kusasi: Survivor

Kusasi was an extraordinary orangutan. Unlike most orangutans living in the wild, he was the star of his own film called “Kusasi: From Orphan to King,” which initially aired on BBC and PBS in 2005, subsequently shown worldwide. Kusasi also became famous as the dominant Camp Leakey adult male orangutan. Kusasi first came to Camp… Continue reading Kusasi: Survivor

Spring 2022 Appeal: Protect and Patrol

Protect and Patrol

You would be hard-pressed to find people more dedicated, resilient, and selfless than the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) patrol rangers. Stationed at remote wilderness posts across more than one million acres of forest in Central Indonesian Borneo (Central Kalimantan), OFI’s indigenous rangers are the heart of our Protect and Patrol Program. This program plays a… Continue reading Spring 2022 Appeal: Protect and Patrol

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EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: IBU RENIE

Jakarta, the current capital of Indonesia. A city famed for its hustle and bustle, roads jam packed with motorbikes and cars each vying for space, sidewalks overflowing with street vendors and people. It’s easy to be overwhelmed here. In amongst this sits an unassuming side street where one will find an equally unassuming house. Finding… Continue reading EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: IBU RENIE

Threats to the Park Escalated in the 1980’s!

In the 1970s the situation facing orangutans and the existence of rainforest seemed somewhat bleak. Little did I know! The situation in the 70s was actually the calm before the storm. Suddenly, sometime in the late 1980s, everything seemed to go haywire. The destruction of the forest around the National Park accelerated. Gold was discovered… Continue reading Threats to the Park Escalated in the 1980’s!

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First Mother: Siswoyo

In the mid 1970s, two retired Indonesian Army Generals, one of whom had been the very popular Chief of Police for all of Indonesia, gave me their four orangutans. One of the retired Generals, who spoke English quite well because he had been a prisoner in Europe during the Second World War after being captured… Continue reading First Mother: Siswoyo

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Young Akmad - 1974

Akmad impacted me not only because she was the first orangutan female whom we rescued but also because of her very genteel and serene nature. She was a wild orangutan who had not been kept in captivity for very long. She was also a local girl in the sense that she was captured by illegal loggers within the Sekonyer River area. Akmad was much older than the typical infant orangutan whom we usually found in captivity. She was on the verge of adolescence and probably had already occasionally traveled some distance from her mother. Hopefully, her mother was not killed when Akmad was captured. Akmad had been captured so close to our study area that perhaps her mother’s home range had extended as far as Camp Leakey. In fact, Akmad could hardly be distinguished by her appearance from the local wild orangutan females in our study area.

Akmad was an extraordinary orangutan. For a long time, she remained the dominant orangutan female in the vicinity of Camp Leakey. She never really pushed her dominance; she was not a bully in any way, shape, or form. The way she moved, the way she acted, the way she behaved, she was always genteel. She was always an aristocrat among the orangutans. Perhaps it was because she had grown up wild. Her calmness and serenity were tied to the strong positive confidence of a naturally born Brahmin.

The impact that she had on me was very deep and permeated my whole understanding of what an orangutan actually was. I became Akmad’s mother. We developed such a relationship that once she herself became a mother, I could touch her infants without Akmad ever objecting. If other people touched her infants, she usually became aggressive. The insight that she provided into the orangutan soul penetrated into my own soul. I came to realize that even though they are very closely related to humans, orangutans live in their own reality.

Although Akmad spent much time with me, sometimes even sleeping in my hammock or on my mattress with me, she never really entered or wanted to enter the human world. She never used human tools in the way some ex-captive orangutans did. She never behaved like she was an ex-captive. Her wildness remained with her. She started wild and stayed wild. But her wildness was so genuine that it still allowed her to become friends with me. We were of different species but totally equal in our relationship despite the fact that she lived in Nature and I lived mostly outside of it.

The conditions at Camp Leakey were unusual. Rod and I were alone most of the time. A local assistant worked for us and lived in camp with his wife and children. The family stayed on the other side of Camp Leakey in their own hut. At that time, Camp Leakey consisted of two decrepit bark-walled thatch-roofed huts separated by about a hundred meters. These huts were relics of illegal loggers whom officials of the Forestry Department had chased out of the area before our arrival. If visitors came in the morning or evening, like Akmad sometimes would do, they would find us alone. During the day, Rod and I would be in the forest. Those conditions enabled Akmad and me to become friends. She allowed me to see the true essence of Orangutan. Even though we humans were foreign to her, we were not totally strangers. She had some understanding of us due to her brief time in captivity. She was smart so she was ambivalent about humans. Unfortunately, however, the greater part of her understanding was that humans could be dangerous and unpredictable, and that most humans, particularly men, needed to be avoided. She didn’t want anything to do with humans although she made an exception for me. In the early days when local people, especially men, occasionally visited our little camp Akmad would noiselessly climb up into the roof rafters, silently slip through the thatch roof without even being noticed and return to the forest.

As I write this, what saddens me is that Akmad recently disappeared. Before she disappeared, she came back once to Camp Leakey which she had not done in many years. She was already probably blind in one eye. I was not in Borneo at the time, but I saw the photographs that Camp Leakey staff had taken. Akmad briefly walked around camp and then she went back into the forest never to return. At that point, I had known her for almost 50 years. She was probably in her mid-50s when she died. Perhaps she had visited Camp Leakey to say goodbye. Once you have formed a true bond with an orangutan that bond lasts forever. Orangutans might not indicate their relationships the way human beings do. If they encounter you after not seeing you for a long time, they might look at you and for thirty seconds your eyes will lock. That is the greatest acknowledgement an orangutan might give you to indicate that they have a relationship with you. Then, after those few seconds, they will look away and return to their own reality.

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