Indonesia Moves Eight Orangutans to Safety as Borneo Fires Rage; 46 Rescued Since August
JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities and conservation workers have moved eight orangutans to a safe location after the endangered primates' forest homes on Borneo were destroyed by wildfires, officials announced on Sunday, October 11, in a development reported by Reuters on October 12.
According to a joint statement by the Indonesian government and the wildlife foundation Yayasan Inisiasi Alam Rehabilitasi Indonesia (YIARI), the eight animals — three mother-and-child pairs and two adolescent males — were rescued between August and September from several locations. They were relocated to the Batu Nyambu protected forest, which the statement said is expected to give them a chance to return to living naturally. The move took six hours by car, one hour by boat and two more hours on foot, with the cages carried on bamboo poles; YIARI conservationists checked the animals' health before the transfer.
Murlan Dameria Pane, head of the West Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency, said the agency and YIARI have rescued 46 fire-affected orangutans since August.
Indonesia is battling its most intense wildfires in 11 years, mainly on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, and the government has warned the blazes could continue until November, aggravated by the El Niño weather pattern. Fires burned around 202,000 hectares (500,000 acres) from January to July; no official data has been released for subsequent months, but non-governmental organisations estimate at least 600,000 more hectares have burned since then.
Haze from the fires has caused about 175,000 cases of respiratory illness in Indonesia and has drifted into neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia, where many schools were closed last Friday as air quality deteriorated.
Orangutans are critically endangered great apes found in the wild only on Borneo and Sumatra, and Indonesia is home to all three recognised species, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Their populations have declined due to deforestation, wildfires and poaching.
Source: Reuters, October 12, via The Business Standard; joint statement by the Indonesian government and YIARI.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 加里曼丹的婆罗洲红毛猩猩（Pongo pygmaeus），A.Baihaqi 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons）；为物种资料图，非本次获救个体
