Eight orang utan rescued in recent weeks from blazes that tore through Borneo have been released into a protected forest, authorities and rescuers said.
The apes were saved from several locations razed by fires – mostly plantations near their forest homes – in West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian side of Borneo last month, the forestry ministry and the Yiari wildlife rehabilitation foundation said in a statement yesterday.
The orang utan, three mum and baby pairs as well as two male teenagers, were relocated on Friday to the Batu Nyambu Protected Forest in West Kalimantan, a 23,000-ha reserve with primary and secondary forest cover.
Yiari CEO Karmele Llano Sanchez said relocating the animals to a new location was a “necessary step” when their habitat was no longer safe.
“Protection of habitats will always be a top priority to ensure orang utan continue to have safe forests to live in, but as long as their habitat remains threatened, rescue is one of the best options we can take to help them survive,” Sanchez said.
The reserve was chosen due to availability of food and water sources as well as its connectivity to other forests, said Yiari operational director Argitoe Ranting.
“We want to ensure that rescued orang utan are not simply moved from one place to another, but actually have a chance to survive in their natural habitat,” Argitoe said.
Indonesian authorities and Yiari rescued 46 orang utan from threats of fires between August and Oct 9, local natural resources agency head Murlan Dameria Pane said.
Orang utan are critically endangered, and around 104,000 orang utans remain in Borneo and Sumatra, down from more than 230,000 a century ago, according to conservation group WWF.
Last month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned fires were burning in habitats containing 52% of Borneo’s orang utan population.
Indonesia regularly battles wildfires during the dry season, but the fires have intensified this year because of the El Nino, set to be one of the strongest since comparable records began four decades ago. — AFP
