“RE-CREATING AND SELF-PROTECTING A DIVERSE BORNEAN RAINFOREST”

Dr. Willie Smits

June 16, 2008, 6:30-8:00 PM

Hosted by Earth & Life Studies at the National Academies and Koshland Science Museum  

In Indonesian Borneo, hard work by hundreds of people has transformed a barren grassland—former rainforest devastated by a century of logging and burning—into a large, healthy rainforest in just a half-dozen years. The many and diverse species in the rainforest have created strong local economic/cultural benefits from agroforestry, which in turn has created strong incentive for residents to protect and enhance the forest.  These new practices are now spreading and being improved upon through spontaneous cooperatives. The forest's increase in biodiversity and rainfall is striking and self-sustaining. An important element of the forest's value—for liquid fuel production, fire protection, medicinals, and scores of other valuable projects—is the sugar palm, which offers an important and sustainable new energy potential that, unlike its competitors, can support both local wealth creation and rainforest conservation.

The lecturer, Dr. Ir. Willie Smits, is an Indonesian (originally Dutch) tropical forester, soil microbiologist, and geneticist. Founder of BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation), he is among the world's leading conservationists of orangutans and their habitat. His new book Thinkers of the Jungle adds important new knowledge to this effort, and describes also his team's pioneering and astonishingly successful efforts not just to save dwindling habitat but also to restore it even in such markedly unfavorable circumstances.

This event is free and open to the public.  The museum is located at 6th and E Streets, NW, Washington, DC. RSVP to Koshland Science Museum at ksm@nas.edu or call 202-334-1201.