Biruté Galdikas was born in London, Germany, on May 10, 1946, while her parents were en route from Lithuania to Canada. She grew up in Toronto, Canada.

When Biruté was 12 years old she loved to go into the wilder sections of High Park in  Toronto. She would spend hours like this, quietly and secretly observing the wild animals in the park.

When she went to university, she combined her love of nature with her curiosity about the great apes and studied psychology and anthropology.

At 22, while she was working on her masters degree in anthropology at the University of California in Los Angeles, Biruté met Dr. Louis Leakey, who is famous for discovering fossils of early humans in Africa. Leakey and the National Geographic Society helped her to set up a research camp in Borneo to study orangutans. 

Biruté arrived in Borneo with her husband, Rod Brindamour, in 1971. They had to live in primitive conditions. Within a few years, she gave birth to a son, Binty, who was raised among the orangutans and dubbed "the child of the rain forest". Biruté had to make difficult choices in the years that followed. She made the agonizing decision to remain in the rain forest when her marriage ended. Her son Binti returned to Canada with her ex-husband. Later she remarried and had two more children.

From March 1996 through the end of March 1998 under a special decree, Biruté served as a senior advisor to the Minister of Forestry on orangutan issues. In June 1997 she won the prestigious "Kalpataru" award, the highest award given by the Republic of Indonesia for outstanding environmental leadership and activity. Biruté Galdikas was the first person of non-Indonesian birth and one of the first women to be so recognized by the Indonesian government.

Biruté is uncompromising in her defense of wild orangutans and the preservation of tropical rain forests, which constitute the orangutan species' only natural habitat. She has always had grassroots support and the continued support of the Indonesian government, even in transition, in her pioneering research and effort to conserve and protect orangutans and rain forests as well as the support from numerous conservation groups around the world. Many of these organizations have honored Biruté with environmental awards.

Founder: Orangutan Foundation International