Jakarta, the current capital of Indonesia. A city famed for its hustle and bustle, roads jam packed with motorbikes and cars each vying for space, sidewalks overflowing with street vendors and people. It’s easy to be overwhelmed here. In amongst this sits an unassuming side street where one will find an equally unassuming house. Finding […]

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As I sit here at my desk writing this letter to you, I reflect on where I was almost exactly fifty years ago this month. It was November 1971 when I arrived at the place I named Camp Leakey. After three years of waiting, I had finally arrived in Borneo, the large forested tropical island […]

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In the 1970s the situation facing orangutans and the existence of rainforest seemed somewhat bleak. Little did I know! The situation in the 70s was actually the calm before the storm. Suddenly, sometime in the late 1980s, everything seemed to go haywire. The destruction of the forest around the National Park accelerated. Gold was discovered […]

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In the mid 1970s, two retired Indonesian Army Generals, one of whom had been the very popular Chief of Police for all of Indonesia, gave me their four orangutans. One of the retired Generals, who spoke English quite well because he had been a prisoner in Europe during the Second World War after being captured […]

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