Dr. Willie Smits

March 17, 2022 Global Earth Repair

The Orangatans’ Best Friend – Borneo

In 1989, while working as a forest researcher in Indonesia, microbiologist Willie Smits first encountered a baby orangutan being sold at market, and later found it abandoned on a rubbish heap. This was a turning-point in his career. Taking the orangutan home, he nurtured it back to health, and was soon given other orangutans to look after. This work of rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing orangutans into the wild developed into what was to become the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS).

As Smits continued to witness the growing human population of the area move into, burn for fuel, and generally devastate the natural forest homes of Orangutan, he also marked that these wonderful creatures were being genocidally eradicated from the Earth!

For over twenty years Smits has worked for the survival of this threatened species of ape, during which time his work has also broadened out into the related areas of sustainable farming, reforestation and remote monitoring of forests. He travels widely, raising awareness of the issues surrounding deforestation in Borneo and the plight of the orangutan. He demonstrates how it has been possible on a relatively small scale to reverse the great damage that is being done to the orangutan and its environment.

“Willie Smits works at the complicated intersection of humankind, the animal world and our green planet.” – TED Talks

Smits founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation in 1991, and is a co-founder of the Masarang Foundation, both of which raise money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world. The goals are reforestation, the self-empowerment of local human populations, and of course, to ensure the sanctuary of Indigenous Animals!

In 2007, Masarang opened a palm sugar factory that uses thermal energy to turn the juice tapped daily from sugar palms (Arenga pinnata) into sugar or ethanol, returning cash and power to the community in the attempt to move toward a better future for the people, forest, and native orangutans, while saving 200,000 trees per year from being cut down as fuel wood.

Dr. Smits is a senior advisor to the Ministry of Forests in Indonesia and has been knighted in the Netherlands. He is also chairman of the Gibbon Foundation and consultant for the Indonesian Orangutan Survival Program.