Category: Visitor’s Corner

A day at OFI’s Playpen Facility at the Orangutan Care Center

The orangutans at OFI’s Playpen Facility are about to finish their banana breakfast when I arrive around 8:30 in the morning. Today, I’m spending my day at this facility within OFI’s Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine to meet the orangutans and their caregivers, and to experience what it’s like to work here. For the caregivers,… Continue reading A day at OFI’s Playpen Facility at the Orangutan Care Center

Dr. Galdikas’ Angels

Many good teams are trios. The Three musketeers, Charlie’s Angels, or for you primate fans, Leakey”s Angels. This last “team” consisted of three female primatologists Dr. Louis Leakey encouraged to study wild great apes in the 60’s and 70’s. The African ape ladies.were Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, while the only ‘Angel’ in Asia was… Continue reading Dr. Galdikas’ Angels

Dr. Galdikas Speaking Event

UNLV had the privilege of hosting one of the world’s leading primatologists, ethologists, and conservationists, on May 5, 2009. For the past thirty years, Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas has spent the majority of her time in the Indonesian rainforest, tracking the most elusive great ape: the orangutan. In that time, she has not only been… Continue reading Dr. Galdikas Speaking Event

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1899 [post_author] => 10294 [post_date] => 2010-07-05 19:25:08 [post_date_gmt] => 2010-07-06 02:25:08 [post_content] => UNLV had the privilege of hosting one of the world's leading primatologists, ethologists, and conservationists, on May 5, 2009. For the past thirty years, Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas has spent the majority of her time in the Indonesian rainforest, tracking the most elusive great ape: the orangutan. In that time, she has not only been an eyewitness, but also a great adversary, to the destruction of the rainforest. As Dr. Galdikas takes to the podium, and addresses the noisy crowd, one would not expect that this soft spoken, kind hearted woman has led patrols to stop illegal logging in Tanjung Puting National Park, Central Indonesian Borneo. However, with seven simple words she demands our attention and the crowd goes silent, “Hello, I am Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas.” For a next hour and half, we sit mesmerized as she takes us on a journey into her life’s work, saving the orangutans of Indonesian Borneo. Illegal logging, she explains, used to be the biggest threat to the orangutan’s habitat. Today, however, the orangutans face a much larger threat, the production of palm oil. Dr. Galdikas explains that palm oil, which is found in everything from chips and cookies to laundry soap and even biofuel, is now the greatest threat facing the rainforest. Plantations, hoping to cash in on this easy to grow, high demand crop, have sprung up all over the island of Borneo. Unfortunately, these plantations need land. The humid warm climate of the Indonesian rainforest is the perfect environment for palm oil production. When Dr. Galdikas unwinds her story, we are able to experience a brief glimpse into the difficulty of her life’s work. As Dr. Galdikas related, protection of the orangutan is ever-changing. You begin to understand that one person cannot do this alone. In the new global economy, we must all be diligent and responsible for the well-being of our primate relatives and all species, with which we share this planet. [post_title] => Dr. Galdikas Speaking Event [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => dr-galdikas-speaking-event-testimonial [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2014-03-16 21:21:45 [post_modified_gmt] => 2014-03-16 21:21:45 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://174.120.128.58/~orangut/?p=1899 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 1 [filter] => raw )