Sometimes it can seem that not much good is happening in the world these days.  Here’s a story of how one man made a difference.  For a completely mind-boggling story about restoring clear-cut rainforests in Borneo, changing the local climate in a few short years, while empowering the local people, watch Willie Smits restores a Rainforest.

By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found ways to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems and devastated people.

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 is proving 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. His Masarang Foundation raises money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world -- and to empower local people. In 2007, Masarang opened a palm-sugar factory that uses thermal energy to turn sugar palms (fast-growing trees that thrive in degraded soils) into sugar and then ethanol, returning cash and power to the community and, with hard work and brilliant planning, starting the cycle toward a better future for people, trees and orangs.

Click here for this, inspiring Ted Talk.


Forwarded by Rachel Finnery


Blessings

Dan Benor, MD
http://awesomewholistichealing.com/