Willie Smits: How to restore a rainforest

By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits believes he has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems. UPDATE: December 2012: The core content of this talk has been challenged on a number of grounds. For details, and for Willie Smits' response to these criticisms, please see this page: http://www.ted.com/pages/791

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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  Nonprofits & Activism

[David OCruadhlaoich]

willie smits is the man

[ritzelcat]

WIllie Smits is for sure one of the heroes of the 21st century who risks even his life to save the Orangs who give the climate change a face!

He deserves at least the alternative nobel prize unless the real one and not these dumb so called scientists!

Willy deserves all our help and money, I've been a loyal supporter of his project and never regretted it. Google BOS and donate NOW!

[samala51]

For a second there I thought this talk was by Will Smith

[marumito]

malaysia destroyed borneo! it's time malaysia returned sabah and north borneo and sarawak back to the Philippines!!!

[fireblade2681]

In reference to the BMW advert at the end. Talking about reducing our impact on the environment is rather like talking about reducing the speed at which you drive towards a cliff. It's not helpful. Reverse our impact on the environment should be the aim. Selling deisel fueled cars hurts the environment no matter what your marketing campaign would have us believe. Also if you are familiar with Jevons paradox you would expect increased engine efficiency to mean more emissions, not less.

[ben ur]

"education". We also really need to give some serious education to our western style of life children about the problems that we are creating rather than only teaching them mathematics and how to become a succesfull bluecolar

[arnab chakraborty]

Lets do it

[A. Yayefall]

this is amzing work _love and many light for everybody

[Kafil Yamin]

Willie is a Dutch, but spent most of his life in Indonesia to protect the orangutan. He even became Indonesian citizen and married Indonesian woman.

[Kafil Yamin]

He is my hero too. It's great to have worked with him. But he had to deal with various difficult situations surrounding him.

[paragonflux]

aka Permaculture