Lithuania issues postage stamp honouring primatologist Birutė Galdikas
Lithuania's postal service is releasing a new stamp on Friday in honour of Birutė Galdikas, a primatologist of Lithuanian descent. She spent more than five decades studying and protecting orangutans.
Lithuania's postal service, Lietuvos paštas, is putting a new postage stamp into circulation on Friday to honour Birutė Galdikas, one of the world's best-known primatologists of Lithuanian descent. Primatologists study apes and other primates. Galdikas died in Los Angeles in March at the age of 79, so the stamp commemorates her life and work.
The stamp belongs to the series "Famous People of the World Who Originated in Lithuania". It has a face value of 2.35 euros, and 15,000 copies have been printed.
Life and work
Galdikas was born in 1946 in a refugee camp in Germany, where many people were living after the Second World War. Her parents later emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where she grew up.
She devoted more than five decades to researching and protecting orangutans. Her work made a significant contribution to global scientific knowledge about the great apes' behaviour, social lives and ecology, as well as the threats to their survival.
The series highlights people with Lithuanian roots who were born or lived abroad. In Galdikas's case the link comes through her parents' origins, even though she was born in Germany and raised in Canada.
