Rescuers race against time as fires ravage orangutan habitat inside Indonesian oil palm concession

JAKARTA — Conservationists are racing to rescue orangutans from a fire-ravaged peat-swamp forest inside an RSPO-certified oil palm concession in West Kalimantan, with smoke still rising and the ground remaining dangerously hot. The 657-hectare (1,623-acre) forest, designated as a High Conservation Value (HCV) area inside PT Kayung Agro Lestari (KAL), is home to around 60 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), one of three orangutan species in the world and the only one found on the island of Borneo, according to conservationists. The forest was also used in October 2015 to release four orangutans rescued by the Yayasan International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI), a Borneo-based NGO working to establish and maintain sustainable orangutan populations. Nearly 11 years after four orangutans were released there, the peat-swamp forest that provided their habitat has itself been almost completely affected by fire, according to satellite analysis by technology consultancy TheTreeMap. This animation shows the progression of fire within and around the PT Kayung Agro Lestari concession in Ketapang (yellow lines), West Kalimantan, between 8 August and 12 September 2026. The sequence shows how fires progressively burned the HCV forests (turning from dark green to dark red) over the course of several weeks. Image courtesy of TheTreeMap/Nusantara Atlas. The analysis indicates that one of the major fires began on Aug. 8 along a canal at the edge of the oil palm plantation in Ketapang district, before spreading westward into the HCV forest. A team of conservationists, including staff from YIARI, is now trying to rescue orangutans still…This article was originally published on

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