10/03/2011

Canadian 'ape angel' set to celebrate creation of orangutan sanctuary

  BY RANDY BOSWELL, POSTMEDIA NEWS MARCH 10, 2011

A baby orangutan which was rescued from locals who turned it into a pet in 2009 in Kalimantan on Borneo island. Canadian naturalist Birute Mary Galdikas is being celebrated for her work with endangered orangutans in Borneo is being celebrated with a new IMAX documentary.

Forty years after Birute Mary Galdikas became the world's leading protector of orangutans, the Canadian scientist's quest to secure a more sustainable future for our long-armed primate cousins is about to mark two major milestones.

Next month will see the worldwide release of the Warner Bros. IMAX documentary Born to Be Wild, directed by Canadian filmmaker David Lickley and showcasing the 64-year-old Galdikas' inspiring conservation efforts at her orangutan sanctuary in Borneo.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian government appears ready to approve the creation a unique jungle reserve where up to 150 of the animals that the Vancouver primatologist has nurtured to maturity over the past four decades could finally be released into the wild.

Just 25 when she began studying the orangutan in 1971, Galdikas was one of the trio of so-called "ape angels" - along with chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall and mountain gorilla specialist Dian Fossey - who worked with famed anthropologist Louis Leakey in Africa and Asia to study and protect each of humanity's fellow species of great apes.

Goodall, who revolutionized scientific knowledge of the chimpanzee with her work in Tanzania, has become one of the world's best-known environmentalists. Fossey, whose life story was told in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, performed groundbreaking research on gorillas in Rwanda before she was murdered by poachers in 1985.

But the German-born, Toronto-raised Galdikas, whose rescue centre in Borneo has fostered hundreds of young orangutans orphaned by poachers and deforestation for palm oil plantations, has remained comparatively unknown.

"I try not to get depressed, I try not to get burned out," Galdikas, who is also a Simon Fraser University professor, said in a 2009 interview.

"But when you get up in the air you start gasping in horror; there's nothing but palm oil in an area that used to be plush rain forest."

The University of British Columbia graduate has been inducted into the Order of Canada and appeared on the October 1975 cover of National Geographic magazine, strolling through a grassy landscape with two orangutans in a memorable, motherly image.

Now, just as the high-profile film about her work is set to debut, Galdikas' long-running campaign to secure a safe, wild-jungle reintroduction site for the orangutans from her rescue centre appears close to fruition.

Indonesian forestry minister Zulkifli Hasan told The Associated Press this week that he is poised to authorize the creation of the 220,000-acre Rimba Raya conservation area in Borneo.

Under a unique plan shaped by Galdikas' Orangutan Foundation International and the Hong Kong-based eco-development firm InfiniteEarth, the parkland reserve would be spared from deforestation for palm oil - the prime threat to the orangutan - thanks to funds secured from selling carbon credits to combat global climate change.

"Birute's goal all along - and now more than ever - is to get these animals back to the wild," Lickley, the in-house documentary maker for the Science North nature museum in Sudbury, Ont., told Postmedia News on Thursday.

He's in Los Angeles preparing for the April 8 premiere of Born to Be Wild, which he says is scheduled to be shown at more North American theatres than any previous IMAX movie.

The Toronto-born filmmaker, who has worked previously with Goodall and has shot other IMAX documentaries for Warner Bros., says he's hoping the widespread release of Born to Be Wild will make Galdikas as much of a household name as the two other great ape "angels."

"In Canada, I don't know how many people know her. But she was one of the original three," said Lickley.

"We know a lot about Dian Fossey from a variety of sources - including Sigourney Weaver (star of Gorillas in the Mist) and all that. And we know a lot about Jane Goodall," he added. "But Birute's work never really got that kind of recognition. It's time, because it's an amazing accomplishment."

Lickley said the proposed parkland reserve has emerged as a "very promising" development that has encouraged Galdikas in her work.

"I think it would be a great solution, with everybody coming out of this a winner."

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