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Contact:
Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas, Archaeology: drbirute@gmail.com
SFU Orangutan Awareness Society: 604-444-9133; castagne@sfu.ca
SFU Public Affairs & Media Relations: 604-291-3210

Renowned primatologist Biruté Mary Galdikas, a professor in Simon Fraser University’s archaeology department, will present a public lecture on current threats to the world’s orangutan population at the Burnaby campus, AQ 3149, on Nov. 8 at 6:30 p.m.

Her lecture—Outrage: What is happening to orangutans today?—coincides with International Orangutan Awareness Week (Nov. 6-10) and focuses on the human and environmental hazards such as poaching and habitat destruction that could cause orangutans to become extinct within the next decade.

Galdikas, who along with Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey was inspired by  the late anthropologist Louis Leakey, has studied the orangutans of Indonesian Borneo in their natural habitat for more than 30 years.

Now the world’s leading authority on the species, Galdikas’s commitment to protecting orangutans resulted in the Indonesian government setting aside more than 300,000 hectares of tropical rainforest in Tanjung Puting for a national park in 1982.

The lecture is by donation;  proceeds will go to the Orangutan Foundation International to support almost 300 ex-captive and orphaned orangutans currently in care in Indonesian Borneo.