On Sunday, Indonesian authorities and conservationists reported the successful relocation of eight orangutans to a safe place after forest fires on the island of Borneo destroyed the habitat of these endangered primates, UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Details
The publication notes that Indonesia is battling the strongest forest fires in 11 years, which have mainly affected the islands of Sumatra and Borneo; the government warned that the fires could continue until November, intensifying due to the El Niño weather phenomenon.
The animals rescued between August and September included three pairs of mothers with their offspring and two adolescent males; they were removed from several different locations, according to a joint statement by the Indonesian government and the conservation foundation Yayasan Inisiasi Alam Rehabilitasi Indonesia (YIARI).
"The relocation to the Batu-Nyambu protected forest is expected to give these eight orangutans a chance to return to life in the wild," the statement said.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), orangutans are great apes on the verge of extinction; in the wild, they are found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra (Southeast Asia), with Indonesia being home to all three recognized species of these animals. Their populations have declined due to deforestation, fires, and poaching.
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The relocation operation took six hours by car, one hour by boat, and another two hours on foot; the orangutans were transported in cages secured to bamboo poles. Before the transport, YIARI specialists checked the animals' health.
According to Murlan Dameria Pane, head of the West Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency, since August the agency, together with YIARI, has rescued 46 orangutans affected by the fires.
From January to July of this year, fires in Indonesia destroyed approximately 202,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of land. Official data for the following months have not yet been released; however, according to estimates by nongovernmental organizations, the fires have since destroyed at least another 600,000 hectares of forest. Smoke from the fires caused 175,000 cases of respiratory illness in Indonesia; the haze also spread to neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, where many schools were closed on Friday due to deteriorating air quality.
Recall
As UNN reported, forest fires in Indonesia are affecting an important research area where orangutans on the island of Borneo are studied, and now threaten a renowned scientific camp—the site of one of the world's longest-running studies of wild great apes.