[4] Her parents, Antanas and Filomena Galdikas, were Lithuanian refugees fleeing the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states following World War II.

When Galdikas was two years old, the family moved to Canada in 1948,[4] when her father signed a contract to work in copper mining in Quebec.

[6] In 1971, at age 25, Galdikas and her then-husband, photographer Rod Brindamour, arrived in Tanjung Puting Reserve, in Indonesian Borneo.

Her second husband, Pak Bohap, who was a Dayak rice farmer and tribal president, assisted in setting up sister organisations in Australia, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom and is co-director of the orangutan program in Borneo.

[1] Galdikas has remained in Borneo for over 40 years while becoming an outspoken advocate for orangutans and the preservation of their rainforest habitat, which is rapidly being destroyed by loggers, palm oil plantations, gold miners, and unnatural conflagrations.

[citation needed] Galdikas's conservation efforts extend beyond advocacy, largely focusing on rehabilitation of the orphaned orangutans turned over to her for care.

In it, Galdikas describes her experiences at Camp Leakey and efforts to rehabilitate ex-captive orangutans and release them into the Borneo rainforest.

In 2021 Dr. Birutė Galdikas became a patron of the nature conservation non-profit organisation the Ancient Woods Foundation [lt][11] aiming to protect the remaining old-growth forests in Lithuania with all the biodiversity there.

[2] Galdikas's work has been acknowledged in television shows hosted by Steve Irwin as well as Jeff Corwin on Animal Planet.

[16] As reported in both articles and summarized in the 1999 book A Dark Place in the Jungle by Canadian novelist Linda Spalding,[17] the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry — with whom Galdikas had clashed over logging policies — claimed that Galdikas held "a very large number of illegal orangutans ... in very poor conditions" at her Indonesian home, prompting the government to consider formal charges.