Indonesia releases eight orangutans rescued from fires

Eight orangutans rescued in over the past weeks from blazes that tore through Borneo Island have been released into a protected forest, Indonesian authorities and rescuers said yesterday.

The apes were saved from several locations razed by fires — mostly plantations near their forest homes — in the West Kalimantan Province on the Indonesian side of Borneo last month, the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and the YIARI wildlife rehabilitation foundation said in a statement.

The orangutans, three mom and baby pairs as well as two male teenagers, were relocated on Friday to the Batu Nyambu Protected Forest in West Kalimantan, a 23,000-hectare reserve with primary and secondary forest cover.

An orangutan rests in a tree amid smoke from forest and land fires in Katune, Indonesia, on Sept. 26.

Photo: AFP / Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

YIARI CEO Karmele Llano Sanchez said relocating the animals to a new location was a “necessary step” when their habitat was no longer safe.

“Protection of habitats will always be a top priority to ensure orangutans continue to have safe forests to live in, but as long as their habitat remains threatened, rescue is one of the best options we can take to help them survive,” Sanchez said.

The reserve was chosen due to availability of food and water sources as well as its connectivity to other forests, YIARI operational director Argitoe Ranting said.

“We want to ensure that rescued orangutans are not simply moved from one place to another, but actually have a chance to survive in their natural habitat,” Argitoe said.

Indonesian authorities and YIARI rescued 46 orangutans from threats of fires between August and Friday, local natural resources agency head Murlan Dameria Pane said.

Orangutans are critically endangered, and about 104,000 orangutans remain in Borneo and Sumatra, down from more than 230,000 a century ago, the World Wildlife Fund said.

Last month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned fires were burning in habitats containing 52 percent of Borneo’s orangutan population.

Indonesia regularly battles wildfires during the dry season, but the fires have intensified this year because of the El Nino, set to be one of the strongest since comparable records began four decades ago.