Orangutan Odyssey
In the 1960s, the legendary paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey encouraged a trio of remarkable woman scientists--Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas--to study the world's great primates. In her memoirReflections of Eden, written long after her fellow "trimates" published theirs, Galdikas described her efforts at Camp Leakey to rehabilitate ex-captive orangutans and release them into the nearby Borneo rainforest.Those rehabilitation efforts became the center of controversies that swirl around Galdikas and the organization she helped found, Orangutan Foundation International. A debate about the effectiveness of rehabilitation reached a fever pitch in the late 1990s with the publication of several articles and books about Galdikas by Canadian novelist Linda Spalding. InA Dark Place in the Jungle, Spalding suggests that Galdikas's efforts in the name of conservation may in fact harm wild orangutan populations. Galdikas herself is characterized as an imperious and careless scientist, which no doubt played a role in Galdikas's decision in July 1999 to sue Spalding for libel.What then are we to make of this book by Galdikas and her longtime collaborator Nancy Briggs? There is no dispute whatsoever about their primary message: orangutans are seriously endangered. Palm oil plantations, bush fires, and other intense human pressures are destroying millions of acres of orangutan habitat. The recently deposed Indonesian government of Suharto was notoriously corrupt and adopted policies that led to large-scale deforestation, although its legacy is treated gingerly by Galdikas, who lives there when she isn't teaching at the University of British Columbia. The close-up photographs that accompany their text show orangutans as full of personality, mischief, and devotion as humans. Perhaps, as Spalding suggests, that's part of the problem. It may be too easy to project anthropocentric values onto orangutans, which, after all, share 97 percent of their genetic heritage with humans.It is difficult to judge either case on its merits since the books share similar flaws: neither presents notes or bibliography to document its arguments. So read them both. The gravely threatened orangutans deserve as much attention as they can get.--Pete Holloran