The Guardian reports:

The mother’s hands were peeling from walking on the torched ground. Her eight-month-old baby, which clung to her side, was dehydrated and thin. The pair, named Mama Abu and Abu (“ash” in Indonesian), were found in an oil palm subsidiary estate, rescuers say.

The orangutan pair were saved last month from wildfires that are devouring Indonesia’s forests and peatland, unleashing thick smog, and destroying the habitat of some of the planet’s most vulnerable species.

Primate specialists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have called for urgent international assistance to help control the fires, warning this week that thousands of orangutans could be killed, injured or displaced.

Wildfires happen every year in Indonesia, where fire is often used to clear land to make way for palm or pulp plantations. But the arrival of a supercharged El Niño has brought especially dry conditions, causing blazes to spread rapidly across parts of Sumatra, Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) and Papua.

The fires have also taken hold across peatland, which is extremely hard to extinguish as it smoulders underground. In its natural state, it should be waterlogged, but over recent decades, vast areas have been drained by industrial agriculture, leaving it highly flammable.

Habitat containing 52% of the total Bornean orangutan population is now affected by the fires, according to a statement from the IUCN’s primate specialists. [Continue reading…]