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.