Biruté Marija Filomena Galdikas Passes Away at 79

Exam-focused facts from the 28 March 2026 current affairs briefing.

Key facts

Biruté Marija Filomena Galdikas, a pioneering Lithuanian-Canadian primatologist and conservationist, passed away on 24 March 2026 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 79.
She was a leading authority on orangutans and established Camp Leakey in the Tanjung Puting Reserve, Indonesian Borneo, in 1971.
Dr. Galdikas earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
She was mentored by the paleoanthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey, who also mentored Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.
In 1986, she co-founded the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), an organisation dedicated to protecting wild orangutans and their habitat.
She was the first person of non-Indonesian birth to receive the Kalpataru award, Indonesia's highest honour for environmental leadership, in June 1997.
Her autobiography, titled Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo, was published in 1995.