PALEMBANG: As wildfires sweep through South Sumatra, conservation officials, firefighters and local residents are racing to protect the elephants of the Padang Sugihan Wildlife Reserve in Banyuasin regency, working together to keep the animals safe as flames threaten their natural habitat.
For Suharto, who leads the firefighting team at the Jalur 21 Elephant Conservation Centre inside the reserve, protecting the elephants and their food sources remains a top priority.
“Our priority right now is to protect the areas that have not yet burned, to keep the elephants safe and preserve their food sources,” he told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.
But access to water remains one of the biggest obstacles to containing the fires.
“Crews sometimes have to walk several kilometres carrying hoses in search of water, only to find that many sources have dried up,” Suharto said.
Establishing water sources inside the reserve would make firefighting operations faster and more efficient, he said, allowing crews to focus on extinguishing the flames rather than spending valuable time searching for water and transporting equipment.
Ground operations remain essential to fully extinguishing the fires, particularly in the reserve’s peatlands. Although aerial water bombing can help suppress surface flames, it cannot reach embers smouldering beneath the ground.
“Even after water is dropped from the air, embers can continue smouldering beneath the peat. We need to thoroughly soak the affected areas to prevent the fires from persisting,” Suharto said.
Residents living near the reserve have also rallied behind the firefighting efforts, organising food donations for crews working to contain the blazes.
Partini, 45, a resident of Sumber Makmur village, near the Jalur 21 Elephant Conservation Centre, has helped mobilise donations from fellow villagers to provide meals and coffee for the firefighters.
“We prepare the meals and coffee ourselves as a genuine expression of gratitude,” Partini said.
Partini said the wildfires that have been occurring inside the reserve have affected nearly every aspect of village life, forcing residents to scale back work in their gardens and plantations. Children have had to attend school online, while rising cases of acute respiratory infections have become an increasing concern.
Despite these hardships, Partini said residents had seen first-hand how tirelessly the joint firefighting teams had worked to contain the fires while protecting the elephants and their habitat.
“We have also seen how exhausted the joint teams have become after spending the past several months fighting the fires while protecting the elephants and their habitat,” she said, explaining the motivation behind the donation drive.
At the Jalur 21 Elephant Conservation Centre, veterinarian Mahmudi and 25 mahouts are working around the clock to safeguard the health of the elephants as wildfires threaten their surrounding habitat.
Mahmudi said he and the mahouts monitor the elephants’ condition 24 hours a day, remaining alert to signs of respiratory distress that could be associated with smoke exposure.
The team is also providing supplementary nutrition, including specially prepared porridge and fresh fruit, to help maintain the elephants’ health and resilience during the fires.
“So far, all the elephants here remain healthy. We will continue to monitor their condition and ensure they remain safe from the effects of wildfires,” Mahmudi said, as quoted by Kompas.id.
The Sumatran elephant is classified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Official estimates put the remaining wild population at between 1,320 and 1,635 across Sumatra, representing a decline of as much as 45 per cent over the past two decades.
The Padang Sugihan Wildlife Reserve is home to 29 trained elephants under human care, alongside an estimated 130 to 140 wild elephants, underscoring the area’s importance for the conservation of the island’s dwindling population.
The Jalur 21 Elephant Conservation Centre is also one of Indonesia’s notable elephant breeding centres, recording 15 births between 2007 and 2026.
Beyond elephants, the reserve supports a diverse range of wildlife, including sun bears, pythons, cobras, several species of freshwater and wetland turtles, numerous bird species and Sunda pangolins.
Wildfires have been burning inside the Padang Sugihan Wildlife Reserve since August, with authorities pointing to strong winds and embers carried from fires outside the reserve as the main causes of the blazes.
By early September, approximately 2,300 hectares of the reserve’s 88,148 hectares had been burned, accounting for about 2.61 per cent of its total area.
As of Oct 11, a wildfire near Karanganyar village had been burning inside the reserve for 40 consecutive days, scorching 294 hectares of land. Another fire near Sebokor village, also within the reserve, had been burning for 14 consecutive days.
Adiosyafri, programme and campaign manager at environmental group Hutan Kita Institute (HaKI), said the recurring wildfires in the Padang Sugihan Wildlife Reserve highlighted the vulnerability of its ecosystem and the challenges of managing a landscape dominated by peatland.
“Peatlands are particularly susceptible to fires when they become dry or degraded. Once a fire spreads beneath the surface, it can be difficult to detect and extinguish, as the peat can continue to smoulder underground even when no visible flames remain above ground,” he said.
Adiosyafri said the government needed to prioritise prevention, rather than focus primarily on fighting fires after they had already broken out, particularly in peatland areas.
