A Baby Orangutan on a Garbage Heap
Willem Frederik Smits was born in 1957 in Weurt, a small village in the Netherlands. He studied forestry and tropical ecology. In 1985 he moved to Indonesia to work as a forest researcher in East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
In 1989 a chance encounter rerouted his life. Walking through a market in Balikpapan, Smits found a dying baby orangutan on a garbage heap. Abandoned. Emaciated. He picked her up, nursed her back to health, and named her Uce.
That single rescue grew into a lifelong mission. Smits founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) in 1991, now the largest primate conservation organization in the world. BOS established rescue and rehabilitation centers that have cared for more than a thousand orphaned and displaced orangutans.
Smits quickly saw the limit of the work. Saving individual animals was futile without saving the habitat. The rainforests of Borneo were being destroyed at a staggering rate for palm oil, logging, and mining.
Samboja Lestari
In 2001 Smits launched his most ambitious project: Samboja Lestari, meaning Everlasting Forest. He acquired roughly 2,000 hectares of severely degraded land near Balikpapan. The site had been repeatedly burned, logged, and reduced to barren grassland dominated by invasive alang-alang.
Fires swept through every year. Temperatures were extreme. The water table had dropped sharply.
He built a three-phase restoration strategy. First, fast-growing sugar palms along the perimeter as firebreaks. The palms are fire-resistant and produce a sweet sap that can be harvested for sugar and bioethanol. Economic incentive for conservation, built in.
Second, a diverse mix of native tree species planted in patterns that mirrored natural forest succession. Third, fruit trees and other species to feed orangutans and other wildlife.
The project employed hundreds of local Dayak people, many of whom had earned their living through logging and slash-and-burn agriculture. Smits offered them alternative livelihoods tied to the health of the forest. Tending nurseries. Planting trees. Harvesting sugar palm sap. Working in ecotourism.
Within a few years the degraded grassland began to shift. Canopy returned. Streams that had been dry for years started flowing again. Local temperatures dropped by several degrees. Rainfall in the area measurably increased.
A Working Ecosystem
By the mid-2010s, Samboja Lestari was a thriving ecosystem supporting over 1,300 tree species and a wide range of wildlife, including sun bears, clouded leopards, and dozens of bird species. A forested island inside the project serves as a pre-release sanctuary for rehabilitated orangutans being prepared for return to the wild.
The project proved that tropical rainforest restoration is achievable even on severely degraded land. And that it can generate economic benefits for local communities while sequestering significant amounts of carbon.
Smits's approach blends ecology, economics, and social welfare. Conservation does not have to come at the cost of local livelihoods. His sugar palm model has been studied and replicated in other parts of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. He has received numerous international awards, including the Order of the Golden Ark from the Dutch royal family and recognition from the United Nations.
Green Economics
Smits continues to work on forest restoration and orangutan conservation in Borneo. He has become an outspoken critic of the palm oil industry and deforestation-driven development models.
He pushes for what he calls green economics. Intact ecosystems should be treated as productive assets, not obstacles to growth.
His work at Samboja Lestari stands as one of the most comprehensive demonstrations on record that restoring tropical rainforest is both ecologically necessary and economically viable.