In his TEDTalk, Willie briefly discussed the crisis facing orangutans in the wild as the Indonesian rainforest is cut down and converted into palm oil plantations. I would like to further elaborate on this, so that people might get a better grasp of what we’re dealing with in our quest to save the orangutans.

Orangutans are sentient beings who share approximately 97.8% of our DNA and express a range of emotions that is just as wide as our own. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are the only two places on Earth where these gentle, intelligent creatures live. The cultivation of palm oil over the last decade has directly led to the slaughter of thousands of individuals as the industry has expanded into previously undisturbed areas of old-growth rainforest. The UNEP estimates that an area of Indonesian rainforest the size of six football fields is cut down every minute of every day. Read that sentence again.

The palm oil and timber industries are guilty of truly horrific ecological atrocities, one of which is the systematic genocide of orangutans. When the forest is cleared, adult orangutans are generally shot on sight. In the absence of bullets they are beaten, burned, tortured, mutilated and often eaten as bushmeat. Babies are literally torn off their dying mothers so that they can be sold on the black market as illegal pets to wealthy families, who see them as status symbols of their own power and prestige. This is not hyperbole, mind you. It has been documented time and time again.

Some of the luckier baby orangutans are confiscated and brought to sanctuaries such as Samboja Lestari, as Willie mentioned, or the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue Center, which is now home to nearly 700 orphaned and displaced orangutans in Central Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). Many of these orangutans are only weeks old when they arrive, and all of them are psychologically traumatized and desperate for their mothers — who are no longer alive. And remember, these are the fortunate ones. For every one we rescue, at least six others are estimated to have been killed, along with their mothers.

Set up under Willie’s auspices in 1999, Nyaru Menteng is managed by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation and run by a remarkable woman named Lone Droscher Nielsen. It is featured on Animal Planet’s award-winning series Orangutan Island as well as on the BBC’s Orangutan Diary. Willie and Lone are true champions in the struggle to save orangutans from a senseless and shamefully premature extinction in the wild.

Find ways to get involved (yes, you can adopt an orangutan) >>

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Willie Smits works at the complicated intersection of humankind, the animal world and our green planet. In his early work as a forester in Indonesia, he came to a deep understanding of that triple relationship, as he watched the growing population of Sulawesi move into (or burn for fuel) forests that are home to the orangutan. These intelligent animals were being killed for food, traded as pets or simply failing to thrive as their forest home degraded.

Smits believes that to rebuild orangutan populations, we must first rebuild their forest habitat — which means helping local people find options other than the short-term fix of harvesting forests to survive.

After you watch Willie Smits’ talk, visit the sites below and explore coverage of his 20-year tale of hope.

Scientific American: Regrowing Borneo’s Rainforest — Tree by Tree
It is a gutsy experiment that has drawn criticism from both scientists and conservationists. For Smits, a veteran of political controversy who has often been at odds with other orangutan rescue projects, the controversy is familiar. He ignores it.

National Geographic: Orangutans Edging Closer to Brink of Extinction
Then when the fires came, they had no water, no food left; it was completely dark for months in a row. The orangutans came out of the forests toward the rivers and became victims of the people there who didn’t like to see their very few last crops being raided by those wild animals.

Ode Magazine: Willie Smits: Hanging around with orangutan
He lost his heart to the orangutans after finding one in a garbage dump. He took care of the primate and later rescued others from bars, nightclubs and tourist attractions, where they were used for entertainment. When Smits felt they were ready to return to their natural habitat, he ran into another problem: There wasn’t enough forest for the apes …

TIME for Kids: The Orangutan Man of Indonesia
“We have taken over the role of the mother orangutan, who usually teaches the baby what it can eat.”

Orangutan.net: Rainforest Seeds Revive Lost Paradise
From this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world.

Ethan Zuckerman’s TED2009 liveblogging: Willie Smits is saving Borneo, one orangutan at a time
When Smits tells us that his project protects a thousand orangutans, the audience erupts into applause … which makes him extremely angry. “No, no! Don’t you understand? I care for more orangutans than all the zoos in the world because we’re so bad at protecting them in the wild.”

And learn more about how you can get involved through these websites:

Masarang Foundation — Willie Smits’ Indonesian-based foundation

Orangutan Outreach — US-based orangutan conservation organization. Through this site, you can support Willie’s work to save the forest, and even adopt an orangutan.

Get involved with Willie Smits’ Masarang Foundation >>

Watch Willie Smits’ talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 390+ TEDTalks — including more talks about the biosphere.

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Ethan Zuckerman has been liveblogging TED2009, sharing the experience in detail. Today he wrote about the talk delivered by Willie Smits, a conservationist passionately defending the habitat of orangutans in Borneo. The following is a snippet from Ethan’s blog:

“Smits tells us about seeing ‘the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen’ on the face of a baby orangutan in a cage in a Borneo market. Later that day, he found the animal, half dead, on a garbage heap – ‘of course, the cage had been salvaged.’ He nursed the orangutan back to life, and she lives in the sanctuary he maintains, with her children and grandchildren, some of the almost a thousand orangutan he cares for.”

Willie’s a true hero to these orangutans, and to everyone at TED as well.