Rescuers pull dozens of orangutans hurt by burns and smoke out of Indonesia's fires

Novita's burns came from the ground. "We rescued her from an area that was burning. Before we reached her, she had to walk through the fire to get to the tree and climb it, so the soles of her feet and her toes were burned," said Jamartin Sihite, chief executive of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation ^[8]. His team tranquilised her, then gave her oxygen and intravenous fluids before moving her to the rehabilitation centre ^[7]. The foundation has taken in several apes caught up in the forest fires ^[16].

Some of that harm may last. "We've been told that the burns on her hands and feet are improving, although even after she recovers, she may not return 100 per cent to how she was before she suffered the burns," said Andi Muhammad Khadafi, head of the Central Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency ^[9]. The IUCN made the general case: "Fire and smoke exposure impose measurable physiological, behavioural and ecological costs on orangutans in peat forest habitats" ^[19].

That evidence shows fire directly injuring individual apes. It stops short of showing population loss. The CNA and Straits Times versions of the story are the same AFP report ^[17], and that report does not include a count of orangutans found dead. A rescue tally only includes animals that lived long enough, and were close enough to a team, to be found ^[1]. The IUCN's habitat figure measures where fire and orangutan range overlap ^[18]. That is exposure, which is a different thing from a count of animals hurt. I think the fair reading is direct harm to individuals, with the effect on the population still unmeasured. The species was already down by more than half over the past century ^[21].

How much habitat has burned is still unclear. Government figures put the area razed between January and July at more than 202,000ha, and they have not been updated since ^[14]. The Nusantara Atlas project, which uses satellite monitoring, estimated that nearly 896,000ha had burned by the end of August ^[15]. That is about 4.4 times the official figure ^[20]. The two series cover different periods, one extending a month further into the peak season, and they use different methods. Part of the gap comes from timing and part from measurement.

The AFP report puts this year's intensity partly down to El Nino ^[12]. It also says slash-and-burn clearing and the drying of peatland have made landscapes that used to resist fire increasingly fire-prone ^[13]. Rescues are continuing past the usual peak. Borneo's dry season typically peaks between July and September ^[11], but Bara was taken from a tree on razed land on October 8 ^[22]. "Seeing the condition of the recently burned lands ... we didn't dare to gamble and assume he'll survive," said Handi Nasoka, an official at the local natural resources conservation agency ^[5].