Eight Orangutans Rescued From Borneo Wildfires Moved to Protected Forest

Three orangutan mothers, each with a baby, and two teenage males have a new address after a summer spent dodging fire. It’s a big, safe forest, and presumably the teenagers are already refusing to say where they’re going or when they’ll be back.

The eight apes were rescued from burning areas of Indonesian Borneo and moved into the Batu Nyambu Protected Forest in West Kalimantan, according to the conservation group YIARI, short for the Indonesian Nature Rehabilitation Initiative Foundation.³ Reports can’t agree whether the move happened Oct. 8 or Oct. 9.² The orangutans are happy to leave that paperwork to the humans. Indonesia’s forestry ministry and YIARI announced it on Oct. 11.⁶

Evicted by fire, with zero notice

Bornean orangutans are critically endangered. When wildfires tore through their forests this year, the flames cut off habitat corridors and shrank the apes’ food supply.² (Corridors are connected strips of forest the apes use to get around. Think highway system, but leafier and with no billboards.)

With few options left, many wandered into plantations where people live and work, and got stranded there, like houseguests with no ride home.² Rescuers collected these eight from fire-hit parts of Ketapang and North Kayong between August and September.³

One pair, a mother named Mama Man and her youngster, Man, had been watched in residents’ plantations since mid-June. Whoever did the naming clearly values efficiency. On Sept. 3, as the fire closed in on their habitat, the team evacuated them from Tempurukan Village.³

Why Batu Nyambu got the job

Batu Nyambu covers about 23,000 hectares, or roughly 57,000 acres, of forest canopy.³ Split eight ways, that is a generous amount of elbow room, and nobody has to share a bathroom.

It was picked because it has the basics an orangutan needs: food, water, space to roam, and links to neighboring forest corridors so the apes aren’t boxed in.³ In real estate terms, it’s move-in ready with excellent access to the neighborhood.

This was a relocation, not a graduation from a rehab center. No diplomas were handed out, and nobody had to sit through a commencement speech. These are wild orangutans that were moved out of danger and set down in safer woods.

The fine print: the fires aren’t out yet

This good news comes with a big asterisk. Fires made worse by a strong El Niño weather pattern are still burning across Borneo.⁶

Indonesian authorities and YIARI have rescued 46 orangutans from fire threats since August, according to Murlan Dameria Pane, head of the local natural resources agency.⁴ Last month, the IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) warned that fires were burning in habitat holding 52% of Borneo’s orangutans.⁴ About 104,000 orangutans remain across Borneo and Sumatra.⁶

Eight apes is a small slice of that picture. Argitoe Ranting, YIARI’s operations director, didn’t sugarcoat it.

“Amid forest and land fires that are still ongoing, we are faced with a difficult situation,” Ranting told ANTARA News.³

He said safe forest areas that can take in displaced orangutans are limited while the fires keep burning.³

For now, three mothers, three babies and two teenagers are back in the trees with food overhead and 57,000 acres to explore. The teenagers will presumably still insist there’s nothing to do. Next up for rescuers is finding more places like Batu Nyambu for the apes still waiting on the edges of the fire.