A student of the renowned paleontologist Dr. Louis B. Leakey and a colleague of both Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, Birute Galdikas is the world's foremost authority on the life and behavior of the orangutan. For more than twenty years she has lived in the jungles of Borneo, devoting her life to studying and preserving this endangered animal as well as its disappearing rain forest habitat. The informative text describes both the obstacles and adventures of Dr. Galdikas's explorations as well as her startling discoveries, and the full-color photographs brilliantly capture her life among the orangutans. Birute Galdikas is an impressive role model, and her inspiring story serves as a reminder that the future of our fragile world, as well as our understanding of it, lies in the dreams and determination of today's young naturalists.
Evelyn Gallardo was born in East Los Angeles, California to Mexican/American/Hopi parents. Her passion for primates was ignited at the age of five by the movie King Kong. She sobbed inconsolably when King Kong fell off the Empire State building and died.
A couple of years later, on a family trip to the L.A. Zoo, Evelyn stood mesmerized by the gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees. She observed them intently and wondered what they were thinking. She asked them silent questions such as, "Do you miss the jungle?", "You look sad. Are you sad?", "Don't you wish you were free?" Her childhood fantasy was to hide in the bushes and free all the primates after the zoo closed down for the night.
This childhood fascination with primates evolved into a career as a writer/photographer/conservationist, which led her to exotic places such as Uganda, Nepal, India, and most of South America including the Galapagos Islands and the Amazon River. She photographed mountain gorillas for Dr. Dian Fossey in Rwanda in 1985 and orangutans in Borneo for Dr. Biruté Galdikas in 1984, 1987 and 1996. Evelyn hit the lecture circuit for 20 years beginning in 1986 shortly after friend Dian Fossey's death to raise awareness of endangered apes and their threatened habitats.
Chronicle Books published Evelyn's first book, Among the Orangutans - The Biruté Galdikas Story, in 1993. Her fieldwork with Biruté and Dian sprouted a "Me Jane, you Tarzan" fantasy for Evelyn. She wanted to live out her life in a treehouse surrounded by primates.
On her first trip to Costa Rica in 1990 she realized her fantasy would someday become a reality. On Valentine's Day in 2000 she and her husband David bought their first modest home in Manuel Antonio from writer Mark Childress, best know for his book and screenplay, Crazy in Alabama. He'd named his treehouse-like home the "Monkey House" because it sat on a privileged part of the rain forest known as the Monkey Corridor, a natural foraging route for 3 species of monkeys. If ever something was meant to be - this was it.
Since then Evelyn and David bought another acre of rain forest within the Monkey Corridor directly on the beach just five minutes from the Monkey House. They built their Discovery Beach House there and converted both their properties into vacation rentals on private nature reserves. They're paying forward their experiences living among amazing wildlife such as howlers - the loudest monkey in the world, Jesus Christ lizards (green basilisk) that walk on water across their swimming pool and huge iridescent Blue Morpho butterflies the size of an opened paperback book.
They live between both homes, whichever one isn't rented at the time. It's an unusual lifestyle but it works for them.
