Emergency Fire Fund
Borneo is Burning NOW!
Update: Aug 14th
Thankfully the raging fire at the edge of the YIARI Ketapang Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in West Borneo has been brought under control thanks to teams fighting the flames day and night.
However, the 60 orangutans living at the center are still in danger.
Peat fires can continue smoldering beneath the ground long after flames have disappeared – and these “zombie fires” can flare up at any moment. Teams are working around the clock to cool and water the land and monitor for critical hotspots. Donations are still desperately needed.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS ANSWERED OUR CALL FOR HELP AND DONATED TO OUR EMERGENCY FIRE FUND APPEAL. WE TRULY APPRECIATE YOUR GENEROSITY!
What is happening?
Fires are raging at the edge of the YIARI Orangutan Rescue, Rehabilitation and Conservation Center in Ketapang, West Borneo. Day and night, the teams are fighting the flames. The need is urgent and the stakes are life and death.
The center is home to 60 orangutans and spans 150 ha that includes carbon-rich peatswamp forests. We need to stay vigilant to ensure the safety of the humans, orangutans, and forests there. The only silver-lining is that the team is experienced and prepared. An existing program, The Power of Mama, is a women-led, community-based fire-fighting initiative that mobilizes teams across the province.
For those of you who are members of our adoption program, Ketapang is home to Pingky, Neng, JoJo, Rickina & Ricko, Kukur, Gatot and Mawa & Temon (pictured below). We are getting regular updates from the team. So far, everyone is safe, but the smoke is a serious concern for everyone at the center.
Please donate to help support the hiring of additional fire-fighting personnel and the purchase of more fire-fighting equipment. Now is not the time to hesitate.
Donate via credit card on our main Donate Page by following this link:
DonateDonate via Paypal by using this link:
The Orangutan Outreach Emergency Fire Fund is supporting the BOS Foundation, YIARI, and the Borneo Nature Foundation. Alongside local communities and government officials, the teams are working around the clock to put out fires as well as patrolling forests and peat swamps in remote areas of Borneo.
The Super El Nino
Every year the dry season raises the risks of fire in Indonesia and in orangutan homes. This year the threat is higher than ever because of a “super” El Niño.
El Niño is a weather phenomenon that hits Indonesia every few years, bringing even higher temperatures and extreme drought. When it strikes, fires grow larger and more uncontrollable than ever before. In 2015, the fires during the super El Niño burned over 2.6 million ha of land in Indonesia and required that hundreds of orangutans be evacuated. The outbreaks released so much carbon dioxide that it caused respiratory distress in animals and humans alike, killing an estimated 100,000 people.
Now, climate scientists predict that the 2026 fire season may be just as catastrophic.
The Threat to Orangutans and People
If we don’t prevent these fires and stop outbreaks from spreading we risk losing primary rainforests rich in biodiversity, releasing tons of carbon in the form of hazardous haze, and killing countless orangutans.
Many forests in Indonesia grow on peatland, which is so rich in carbon that fires can even burn underground. This means that once the burns begin, they can be almost impossible to extinguish and can burn for weeks or even months. As they burn, a haze blankets the land. Young orangutans and human children are prone to develop respiratory illness even if the flames do not reach their homes. However, the agricultural areas around cities and reforestation sites are at high risk for fires and can result in the flames striking orangutan rehabilitation centers directly.
These fires threaten the lives of orangutans today with trauma and sickness and they threaten the future of orangutans by taking away their forest homes.
How You Can Help
We must be proactive and ready to react – quickly.
We are working with our partners, Yayasan Inisiasi Alam Rehabilitasi Indonesia (YIARI), Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF), and Borneo Nature Foundation (BNF) to support their firefighting programs. All three manage huge swaths of rainforest and reforestation areas across Borneo that are home to thousands of orangutans and are important resources for local, indigenous communities. To keep these forests safe, they have established partnerships with villages to employ fire patrol and firefightings teams. Ahead of the fire season, we are ensuring the teams are trained and fully equipped to fight fires.
Now that the risk for fires is high, the teams are conducting patrols frequently and are ready to respond if there is an outbreak. Every minute matters when it comes to getting a fire outbreak under control.
Donate to our Emergency Fire Fund!
Donations will help pay for staff, equipment, medical supplies and fire-fighting gear. The situation is growing critical! Thank you for your support in these challenging times.
Suggested donations:
USD $25.00 — Firefighting gear: gloves, goggles, eye drops, masks
USD $50.00 — Forest recovery: 10 tropical hardwood saplings
USD $100.00 — Build a dam to block the ex-logging canals in the peat forests
USD $200.00 — Dig a deep well to supply water for firefighting
USD $500.00 — Equip a fire-fighting team with hoses, nozzles and safety equipment
Donate via credit card on our main Donate Page by following this link:
DonateDonate via Paypal by using this link:
The Fire Feed
Latest Update: August 14, 2026
August 14, 2026
Outstanding support has enabled the YIARI team to fight the fires outside of their orangutan rehabilitation center day and night for four days straight. This, combined with waterbombing by the Indonesian government, has brought the blazes under control. Now hotspots still surround the center so the teams are preparing for the return of “zombie fires”. These are underground fires that can reach the surface after the main blaze is extinguished.
August 12, 2026
In the Mawas Conservation Area, a mixed peatswamp forest protected by the BOS Foundation, fires have already burned through 43 ha of land.
August 12, 2026
The fires are now 100 m from the YIARI orangutan rehabilitation center in West Kalimantan. All orangutans have been evacuated from the forest enclosures and into safer cages in the middle of the center.
August 10, 2026
The previous burn that was 1 km from the YIARI orangutan rehabilitation center in West Kalimantan has reignited and is now only 300 m from the center. The teams are now battling the blaze around the clock.
August 6, 2026
A joint team from YIARI and government agencies rescued a male orangutan from a village plantation who was under threat from forest fires in the immediate area. The area suffered from fires in 2015 and 2019 attributed to widespread land clearing.
July 31, 2026
Indonesia’s weather agency detected 5,019 wildfire hotspots as of mid-July 2026, with the number rising faster than during previous El Niño events in 2015, 2019, and 2023.
July 22, 2026
Fires covering 29 ha broke out just 1 km away from the YIARI orangutan rehabilitation center in West Kalimantan. YIARI teams on the ground battled the fires with aerial support from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), dropping water from above with helicopters.
May 2026
The fires in Pematung Gadung were brought under control by the YIARI and community firefighting teams.
March 2026
Fires covering about 5 ha started in Pematung Gadung, a community-powered reforestation site and just 28 miles from the YIARI orangutan rehabilitation center in West Kalimantan.
Fire Fund FAQs
All funds donated to firefighting are used for rapid response to fight fires directly or for fire prevention measures.
For donations made during the fire season (June-November), they will be held in the form of an emergency fund. In the case of fire outbreak in or around the working area of an Orangutan Outreach’s partner, if they do not have the funds to mobilize a firefighting team, Orangutan Outreach will provide funding if the emergency funds are sufficient. In the case of multiple outbreaks, the Orangutan Outreach team will allocate funds based on the need and risk level for orangutans and humans.
If there are funds still held in the Orangutan Outreach’s emergency fire fund at the end of the fire season or donations are made during the wet season (December-May), Orangutan Outreach will hold the funds until the following fire season or allocate them towards fire prevention measures such as, but not limited to deep well/water reservoir construction, canal damming, equipment acquisition, firefighting training, or community outreach on fire prevention.
As a tropical country, fires do not start naturally in Indonesia. All wildfires start as smaller human-made fires that grow out of control. Typically fire is used to clear agricultural land or in cases of arson for land-grabbing. While both are illegal in Indonesia, instances of each are still reported every year.
Traditionally, small farmers would use fires to clear land prior to planting – and when this occurs near healthy forest, this is not dangerous as healthy, established rainforests with high water tables can naturally regulate fire. However, large-scale development has cleared and degraded much of this forest cover and caused the draining of water tables. Now, due to the conditions created by humans, even a small fire can quickly grow out of control.
Firefighting teams are made by organizations, villages, and the government. When an outbreak is reported, the team needs to take all necessary equipment to the fire location. The teams are equipped with water pumps, but they must have a source of water to use the pumps and hoses. The most common water sources are a nearby river or a previously prepared deep well or water reservoir. These man-made water sources are critical for firefighting in remote areas, but they must be prepared months in advance of the dry season to be usable.
When outbreaks are particularly large, the Indonesian National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB) can mobilize helicopters to carry out “water bombing.” These are aerial drops of huge amounts of water (upwards of 800 L per drop) that are carried out repeatedly to extinguish flames. This is the most effective way to stop an active fire blaze, however, limited availability of helicopters and other resources makes it impossible for water bombing to be used on every fire when outbreaks are widespread across the archipelago nation.
In Indonesia, forest fires don’t mean that just the trees are burning, but also the ground. Many forests are on peatland. Peat is a carbon-rich type of earth and when it burns, it is similar to a slow-burning fuel. Under these very special forests, the peat penetrates deep underground in a reserve dome. The Mawas Conservation Area, a working area of Orangutan Outreach’s partner, BOSF, has a double dome of peat. Here it reaches some of the greatest depths in the world for peat, 18 m or 60 f.
A dense, slow-burning solid fuel source spanning dozens of feet into the earth means fires can burn under the surface. Imagine a fire starts in one location and is extinguished at the surface, but unbeknownst to the team, underground the fire continues to burn and move. Soon it reaches the surface in a new location and they must begin to fight the same fire all over again.
When we are looking at fires that burn millions of hectares, the world suddenly becomes a much smaller place. The fires in Indonesia are particularly dangerous for the rest of the world because of the peatland that burns there. Peat is a carbon-rich type of earth, meaning that when it burns, it produces carbon emissions, just like burning coal or gasoline. In 2015, widespread fires in Indonesia resulted in the emission of more greenhouse gases each day than all U.S. economic activities combined. This had two disastrous results.
Across Southeast Asia, the winds carried the hazard haze from these fires into other countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. People across the region suffered from respiratory illnesses, which is estimated to have contributed to the death of upwards of 100,000 people. Furthermore, these emissions are potent greenhouse gases and make significant contributions to global climate change, which is resulting in more extreme weather events across the globe. We all need to care about the fires in Indonesia.