An endangered female orangutan has been rescued after walking through active wildfire flames in Indonesia’s Borneo, as a surging 2026 fire season driven by corporate land clearing ravages the region’s rainforests. The young ape, nicknamed Novita, is recovering from burns on her hands and feet at a rehabilitation center while hundreds of thousands of hectares burn across Sumatra and Borneo.
Orangutan Rescues Amid Raging Borneo Wildfires
Novita, estimated to be three to four years old, was found in late September clinging to a mostly leafless tree surrounded by heavy smoke. Wildlife rescue teams from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation tranquilized the ape and administered oxygen and intravenous fluids before transporting her to the Nyaru Menteng rehabilitation center in Palangkaraya.
“We rescued her from an area that was burning,” said Jamartin Sihite, CEO of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. “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.”
Andi Muhammad Khadafi, head of the Central Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency, noted that while Novita’s burns are improving under intensive care, she may not return 100% to how she was before she suffered the burns. Another male orangutan named Bara was similarly plucked from razed land on a Thursday by local conservation officials who determined they could not gamble on his survival in the thick haze. Bara sustained minor burn injuries and was transferred to a nature reserve in Central Kalimantan.
A Fivefold Surge in Hotspots Across Concession Lands
The acute threat to endemic wildlife forms part of a much broader ecological and economic crisis unfolding across Indonesia. Leonardo DiCaprio drew international attention to the scale of the disaster, noting via social media that blazes have consumed approximately 800,000 hectares of forest land, destroying primary rainforest and threatening massive carbon stores. The dual threat of rising global temperatures and intentional land-clearing practices has turned parched peatlands into tinderboxes.
A comprehensive report released by Trend Asia highlighted a drastic escalation in Indonesia’s 2026 fire season, recording a fivefold increase in fire hotspots compared to the previous year. Between January and August 2026, authorities detected 32,021 hotspots, up sharply from 5,961 during the same period in 2025. Trend Asia’s analysis revealed that up to 56 percent of high-confidence hotspots between January 2024 and August 2026 fell directly inside corporate land concessions, divided among mining concessions at 27 percent, oil palm concessions at 20 percent, and forestry concessions at 15 percent.
Global Supply Chains and Regional Haze Pressures
The economic footprint of these fires extends far beyond local provincial borders. Indonesia exported US$221.4 billion worth of mining, palm oil, and forestry products across 169 destination countries between January 2024 and July 2026. More than 75 percent of this total export value flowed to G20 nations, with China leading at 46.8 percent, followed by India at 13.3 percent, Japan at 6.8 percent, and South Korea at 4.0 percent.
“The energy transition is being built on the same land governance that set the country on fire,” stated Amalya Oktaviani of Trend Asia. Environmental experts speaking at Bangkok Climate Week emphasized that international supply chain regulations must be tightened to prevent corporations from profiting off commodities tied to deforestation and peatland destruction. Meanwhile, the resulting thick haze has generated tens of thousands of respiratory illnesses locally while triggering regional air pollution spikes in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
