Rescuers race against time as fires ravage orangutan habitat inside Indonesian oil palm concession

Fires have swept through a 657-hectare High Conservation Value forest inside the PT Kayung Agro Lestari oil palm concession in West Kalimantan, an RSPO-certified area home to an estimated 50 to 60 Bornean orangutans. Satellite analysis shows the blaze began August 8 along a canal at the plantation's edge and spread west into the forest, which by mid-September appeared almost entirely burned. Rescuers from YIARI have pulled five orangutans out so far and located six more still stranded amid fallen trunks, lingering smoke and peat ground hot enough to hide embers underneath.

Rescuers said they were held up for five hours at the company's gate before being allowed in to begin the search. A larger, 2,330-hectare HCV area in the same concession, home to an estimated 200 orangutans, is now at least half burned as well.

First Resources, which owns the concession, points to its 'zero burning policy.' A biologist who worked with the company since 2011 says fires had been rare there for years, under an arrangement paying nearby villages to prevent burning, until the company acquired the land in March 2025 and, by his account, stopped the payments.

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