Michelle Desilets – Executive Director

Michelle Desilets is the Founder and Executive Director of Orangutan Land Trust and has been working in orangutan conservation for 27 years. Michelle previously founded and directed the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK.

Lone Droscher-Nielsen – President & Trustee

Lone Droscher-Nielsen is President and Trustee to Orangutan Land Trust. She has worked in orangutan conservation since 1993 and founded what is now the world’s largest primate rescue centre, the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Reintroduction Project in 1998. Numerous television programmes have been made showcasing her work in saving over 1000 orangutans, including Orangutan Diary and Orangutan Island. Lone is knighted in her native Denmark.

Prof David Chivers – Chair & Trustee

Professor David Chivers, MA, PhD, ScD, FLS, FZS, FRGS, was born in April 1944, and from Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood, he came up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1963, to read veterinary medicine. Reading Physical Anthropology in his third year, showed him that he could combine his boyhood interest in natural history with a growing interest in our relatives, so he registered for a Ph.D. and went off to the Malay Peninsula for two years to study the ecology and behaviour of the siamang.

Thijs Pasmans – Trustee

Thijs started as a sustainability officer at MVO – The Netherlands Oils and Fats Industry in 2014. During this time he learned from traders, refiners, manufactures, growers, NGO’s, governments and scientific experts how to go about sustainable palm oil. His best experiences were when he worked with oil palm smallholders and plantation companies in Indonesia in 2017. After he left MVO in 2019, Thijs started as a trustee and content writer for the Orangutan Land Trust.

Judith Murdoch – Trustee

Judith first realised her passion for sustainability when she was the Marketing and CSR Manager at a global edible oils Company. Here she developed strategies for these functions and developed training for customers on all aspects of sustainable palm oil. Judith joined OLT in 2019 to share her supply chain and policy knowledge and helps reach out to companies looking for conservation projects.

Dr Erik Meijaard – Advisory Board

Dr Marc Acrenaz – Advisory Board

Dr Ian Singleton – Advisory Board

Dr Ian Singleton is Director of Conservation at PanEco Foundation and Scientific Director for the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme. He was formerly Senior orangutan keeper at Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust and Animal keeper at Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and Zoological Society of London. He studied at the University of Kent (PhD, Ecology; orangutan ranging behaviour, 1996 – 2000) and the University of Sunderland (BSc(hons), Environmental Science, 1984 – 1987).

Fitrian Ardiansyah – Advisory Board

Fitrian Ardiansyah is Indonesia Country Director at IDH – The Sustainable Trade Initiative, among others, in charge of ISLA (initiative for sustainable landscapes) and helping coordinate palm oil and pulp and paper programs in Indonesia. He is a Fellow at the International League of Conservation Writers, and a Scientific Advisor for the Orangutan Land Trust. He has helped think-tank organisations including Pelangi Indonesia and Article 33. He was undertaking doctoral research at the Crawford School, the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Dr Carl Traeholt – Advisory Board

Dr Carl Traeholt is the Southeast Asia Programme Director for Copenhagen Zoo.

Dr John Payne – Advisory Board

John (Junaidi) Payne led a Statewide survey of orangutans in Sabah in the mid-1980s, finding that there were about 20,000 individuals. In that period when half of Sabah’s forests had not been logged and oil palm plantations occupied only 2% of Sabah’s land, it was clear that dense breeding populations of the species were linked to low, flat, moist soils, irrespective of forest condition, and the best sites for oil palm. Based on that, he believes that we should help the species adapt over the next half-century to a lowland landscape of oil palm, orang-utan food plants and regenerating forest.

Dr Serge Wich – Advisory Board

Dr Serge Wich, OLT Advisory Board, is a biologist/ecologist with a keen interest in primates and tropical rain forests. His work focuses on pure and applied research. He has studied several primate species, but has been mainly focusing on orangutans and their habitat in recent years. He currently is a professor at Liverpool John Moores University in the Research Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology.

Bart W van Assen – Advisory Board

An Indonesianist for over two decades, Bart is endorsed as Quality Panel Member by the High Conservation Value Resource Network, as an independent trainer (P&C Lead Auditor and SCC) by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil, and as Certification Coach by The Borneo Initiative.

Bart has an extensive track record covering all disciplines of certification (prosperity, people & planet) in Indonesia. He has cooperated with various for-profit and not-for-profit entities in Indonesia and Malaysia and currently supports KAYON, a start-up initiative promoting a new approach to (tropical) rainforest conservation: pirate–a–tree.

Juliarta Bramansa Ottay – Advisory Board