First Wild Orangutan Encounters

Fifty years ago, a young Canadian scientist waded into the rainforests of Borneo, Indonesia with a mission in mind. She was there to study orangutans. Little did she know that she would become the world's foremost expert on the great apes, and would spend decades with them. Birute Galdikas became part of a group of well-known women studying our primate cousins -- along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. The anthropologist, primatologist and Simon Fraser University professor died on March 24 at the age of 79. Listen to our conversation with Birute Galdikas in 2021