fires in Indonesia

In recent months, severe fires have ravaged the islands of Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia. It turns out that these islands are also home to 50,000 orangutans remaining in the wild and new habitat conservationists statistics suggest that one third of the orangutans now in danger of dying due to fire.

Orangutans are already under threat due to the alarming expansion of palm oil plantations, not to mention hunting and the pet trade. But now distressing images of apes fleeing the flames, full of suffering burns and smoke inhalation have emerged. The photo below has gone viral, showing a female orangutan and her son after being arrested for entering a local village to escape the fire.

Indonesia fires have spread to primary forests and national parks, which are some of the last refuges, not only for orangutane s, but also for other threatened species such as rhinos and tigers. So far more than 100,000 fires have burned more than 2 million hectares of forest along Sumatra and the Indonesian half of Borneo. Researchers and firefighters have been working since late summer to track and control the fires, as well as monitor and help orangutans. But due to poor land management practices and the large number of natural ecosystem has been destroyed and replaced with oil palm plantations it has proved impossible to stop the fires.