PALANGKARAYA, Indonesia – The orang utan clings to the top of a mostly leafless tree in Indonesia’s Borneo, as waves of thick smoke from the forest fires burning below waft over her.
Nicknamed Novita, the ape shown in footage released by a conservation group is among dozens that have been rescued from wildfires burning across parts of Sumatra and Borneo in recent months.
They include Bara, a male orang utan plucked from the haze on Oct 8, the authorities told AFP.
“He was found on top of a tree on razed land. The haze was quite thick in the area because fires were burning around there,” Handi Nasoka, a local natural resources conservation agency official, said on Oct 9.
“Seeing the condition of the recently burnt lands… we didn’t dare to gamble and assume he’ll survive.”
Bara was “relatively healthy, with minor burn injuries”, Handi added, and will be moved to a nature reserve elsewhere in the Central Kalimantan region where he was rescued.
Wildfires have piled pressure on the already endangered species and forced local groups to carry out high-stakes rescues of animals suffering smoke inhalation and burns.
Novita, a female estimated to be three to four years old, remains in intensive care at the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation centre in Indonesia’s Palangkaraya after being rescued in September.
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