About Willie Smits
Willie Smits (born February 22, 1957, in Weurt, Gelderland, the Netherlands) is a trained forester, microbiologist, conservationist, animal welfare activist, wilderness engineer and social entrepreneur. He has lived in Indonesia since 1985 and is an Indonesian citizen. He is married to Adrienne C. Watson since March 2016. Smits founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation and has worked for the survival of this threatened species of ape, during which time his work has also broadened out into the related areas of sustainable farming, reforestation and remote monitoring of forests. He travels widely, raising awareness of the issues surrounding deforestation in Borneo and the plight of the orangutan. He became a senior advisor to the Ministry of Forests in Indonesia and has been knighted in the Netherlands. In 1991 Smits founded what was soon to become the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS), in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), the world's largest organization for the protection of the endangered Bornean orangutans. Two years before, Smits had had his first encounter with an orangutan in the market.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.