Smits champions conservation

Smits champions conservation

Bambang M, Contributor, Yogyakarta

Although saving the environment in Indonesia has often entailed
potential danger, Willie Smits, a Dutchman who has been living in
Indonesia for more than two decades, has always been enthusiastic
in this effort.

His latest move is the establishment of animal rescue centers
(PPS) in several regions in this country.

One of the important functions of PPS is to provide shelter to
protected animals that the forestry ministry's Natural Resources
Conservation Agency, or BKSDA, has confiscated from illegal
traders and keepers. At PPS, they will be retrained before being
released into the wild.

In the past, crackdowns on illegal trading of protected
animals as mandated by Law No. 5/1990 on conservation were
ineffective, largely because the government did not have a proper
place to keep seized animals.

These failures caused great concern to Smits. He did not want
Indonesia to top the list of countries losing protected species.

In 1999 Smits was named director of The Gibbon Foundation, an
institution that is concerned with wildlife in Indonesia. As
director, Smits began to change the institute's policy and geared
it toward the conservation of animals. One of his initiatives was
the setting up of PPS.

The project began in earnest in 2002 and today there are nine
PPS centers, namely in Yogyakarta, Bogor, Sukabumi, Malang, East,
West and Central Kalimantan, Manado and Jakarta. Three more will
be set up in Bali, Medan and Irian Jaya.

"We have spent about Rp 45 billion," said Smits, a tropical
forest expert who graduated from Wageningen Agricultural
University in Holland.

Now, the BKSDA in many provinces have begun to actively
confiscate protected animals from illegal traders and keepers.

"Only if we can stop illegal trading of protected animals, can
we hope to save these animals from extinction," said Smits, who
is married to Syennie, and has three children.

Smits introduced a method for the proliferation of meranti
trees through mikorisa fungi symbiosis. Thanks to his skills, in
the 1980s the then forestry minister Soedjarwo asked him to stay
in Indonesia to apply this method.

Smits has also developed a reforestation method using local
trees and supported by teaching over 1,000 Indonesians a
knowledge of forest management and nature conservation. In
recognition of his services in nature conservation, the
government of Indonesia conferred on him in 1998 a development
medal of merit, making him the only foreigner to ever receive the
award.

He has also received many other international citations, such
as the Knight Rider from the Dutch government, the Rider Digest
Award, the Blue Planet Award, the Hero of Today Award.

However, Smits, now 46, says conservationists have had little
success.

"Our environment has been undergoing rapid degradation and
none of us can ever say we have been successful in this regard.
We all are yet to be successful," he said in Yogyakarta last
month.

Formerly an expert staff member of the forestry ministry (1993
- 1998), Smits is also an orangutan expert and savior. TIME. Com
of October 26, 1998 referred to him as "The Orangutan Man of
Indonesia." Want proof? Just take an orangutan to him and he can
quickly tell you how old the primate is, how he has been caught
and where it came from.

Aside from learning from publications on primates and
observing the animal's behavior in the forest, Smits said he
learned a lot about orangutans by observing his children when
they learned to speak.

"We had to understand what the children wanted even though
they could not speak yet. That's why I can now understand the
wishes of an orangutan and also its story when it feels sad,"
said Smits, a fan of Ebiet G. Ade.

Smits began to love nature and animals when he was small. When
he was six, he began to love birds. At 12, he took part in a
campaign to set free hawks and owls.

He began to be interested in saving orangutans when he met a
dying orangutan at Klandasan Market, Balikpapan, in 1989. "I was
very sad," he reminisced. Still he did not wish to buy it. At
night, he returned to the market only to find the animal dumped
in the garbage. He took it home. Unfortunately, one of the local
traders saw him and shouted that he pay for the animal. Smits did
not heed the calls and ran home with the primate.

He was lucky as he saved this primate, later called Uce. His
success in raising Uce spread to many places. Later state-owned
forestry company Inhutani gave him an orangutan. At first, he
thought of taking the two primates to the orangutan
rehabilitation center in Tanjung Puting, Central Kalimantan and
Bahorok, North Sumatra. After studying information concerning the
centers, he abandoned the idea because he did not believe in the
rehabilitation processes employed by the centers.

Finally, he decided to set up his own rehabilitation center
but found that no conservation institution was interested in his
idea. He turned to the international school in Balikpapan, the
school where he sent his children. For three years, the students
enthusiastically carried out fund-raising activities.

With the help of the students, he set up the Balikpapan
Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation. BOS is in charge of the
Wanariset Orangutan Reintroduction Center in Samboja, East
Kalimantan, and its branch in Nyarumenteng, Central Kalimantan.
BOS is now the world's largest primate conservation institution.

Since it was founded in 1991, BOS has saved a number of
orangutans and reintroduced many to the wild. One of the success
stories is that of Uce, which has given birth to baby orangutans
twice since her reintroduction to the wild. The BBC has made a
film called Orangutan Rescue, which is a documentation of his
efforts to save orangutans. CNN Earth Matters has documented his
hard work to save orangutans from forest fires in a film titled
Flames of Extinction.

But not everybody is happy with what he does. In 1999, he and
his family received a death threat. Yet, he was not deterred. He
simply moved his family to Jakarta in 1999 and continued his
work.

Even his PPS has led to many allegations that he is nurturing
an ulterior motive.

"Just look at everything that I have done. It's all
transparent. I don't care as I don't work for myself or other
people. I work for nature," he said.

Hopefully he will become a naturalized Indonesian soon. He has
decided to apply for citizenship as he is married to an
Indonesian and has raised his children here.

Still, he hates to be called Mr. Smits.

"I've been staying in this country for more than two decades
now but I'm still regarded as an alien," said Smits, who has
mastered more than five languages and can recite from memory
Indonesia's five-point principle of Pancasila and the national
anthem, Indonesia Raya.