Young orangutan saved from corporate wildfire in Indonesia

This video says about itself:

BBC Wild Nature: Sumatra, Orangutan Sanctuary – Indonesian Fire Islands

29 August 2008

Extraordinary BBC natural history clip charting the falling numbers of the orangutan population, and the importance of their natural habitat that can now only be found on the Indonesian Fire Islands.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

Orangutan female rescued from forest fire in Indonesia

Today, 14:07

Rescue workers in the Indonesian part of Borneo have rescued a young female orangutan after her habitat was destroyed by wildfires.

According to the rescuers the female of around three years old was fleeing after the conservation area where she lived went up in flames.

“This is the third orangutan who was rescued and was handed over to us to recover,” said a spokesman for the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation.

The habitat of orangutans in the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra is seriously threatened by the wildfires. Indonesia blames the fires on commercial corporations producing palm oil. Those companies burn forests to the ground to make way for agribusiness.

The haze engulfing much of South East Asia from deliberately lit Indonesian forest fires, largely in Sumatra and Kalimantan, is likely to last until November due to the El Niño weather pattern that will delay the onset of the wet season. The lighting of fires to clear land is an annual event: here.

Indonesia’s fires are a corporate crime | Green Left Weekly: here.

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