JAKARTA — Conservationists are racing to rescue orangutans from a fire-ravaged peat-swamp forest inside an RSPO-certified oil palm concession in West Kalimantan, with smoke still rising and the ground remaining dangerously hot. The 657-hectare (1,623-acre) forest, designated as a High Conservation Value (HCV) area inside PT Kayung Agro Lestari (KAL), is home to around 60 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), one of three orangutan species in the world and the only one found on the island of Borneo, according to conservationists. The forest was also used in October 2015 to release four orangutans rescued by the Yayasan International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI), a Borneo-based NGO working to establish and maintain sustainable orangutan populations. Nearly 11 years after four orangutans were released there, the peat-swamp forest that provided their habitat has itself been almost completely affected by fire, according to satellite analysis by technology consultancy TheTreeMap. This animation shows the progression of fire within and around the PT Kayung Agro Lestari concession in Ketapang (yellow lines), West Kalimantan, between 8 August and 12 September 2026. The sequence shows how fires progressively burned the HCV forests (turning from dark green to dark red) over the course of several weeks. Image courtesy of TheTreeMap/Nusantara Atlas. The analysis indicates that one of the major fires began on Aug. 8 along a canal at the edge of the oil palm plantation in Ketapang district, before spreading westward into the HCV forest. A team of conservationists, including staff from YIARI, is now trying to rescue orangutans still…This article was originally published on Mongabay

KUALA LUMPUR — Video editor Mohamad Haazim has lost count of how many times he refreshes Malaysia’s Air Pollutant Index (API) website every day to check air quality in the city where he lives. It’s been hovering between “unhealthy” and “hazardous” in recent weeks. Haazim, who asked to be identified only by his given names for privacy reasons, lives in Kuching, the capital of Malaysia’s Sarawak state. It is known as one of the cities with the cleanest air quality in the country, but since last month, Kuching has earned a dubious distinction of being the world’s “most polluted major city,” according to IQAir, a Swiss-based air quality technology company. The culprit? Smog from Indonesia’s wildfires. “It has deeply disrupted my daily routine,” Haazim said of the haze. “Outdoor routines are completely on hold; morning and evening walks are out of the question.” An avid marathon runner, Haazim no longer runs five times a week outdoors. “I am now down to just two indoor runs,” he told Mongabay last week. At home and at work, he said he ensures windows are shut tight, with air purifiers running at full blast. Kuching riverside in the city center is shrouded in thick haze in Kuching, Sarawak state, Malaysia, on Sept. 4, 2026. Image by AP Photo/Xpin Voon. He can’t forget his long drive home from Lawas, a Sarawak town located between Sabah and Brunei, on Aug. 31. “The haze became much thicker as we went back to Kuching,” he said. “As we arrived…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Jeff Reed wasn’t raised to hate wolves. But as a child he bought into the Little Red Riding Hood myth regarding their villainous nature. You see one, you shoot it. But not on a night on his Montana farm some five years ago, a night that proved life-changing not only for Reed, but perhaps for the study and conservation of wolves. “I thought it was a large coyote,” Reed recalls. “It was standing broadside in my [pickup truck] headlights, like 10 yards away, this big, beautiful gray wolf. And he’s just looking at me. I open the door, grab my rifle, and he’s standing there … I’m pointing my barrel, looking at it. “Then all of a sudden — you can call it an Apostle Paul sees Jesus for the first time and goes blind moment — and I just go, ‘What the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this?’ So I shot over its back, like way high. It didn’t bolt. It just trotted right beside me … and kept going.” Reed heeded that night’s sacred call. It wasn’t long before wolf indifference morphed into obsession, and led to his linking up with the world’s leading long-term wolf research effort. Which may seem like an odd fit, Reed being a Ph.D. linguist who spent much of his career up to that point leading software engineering for Silicon Valley firms. But all that knowledge has intertwined perfectly: The Cry Wolf Project is grounded in bioacoustics and artificial intelligence…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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In mid-2025, a trio of male African wild dogs headed east through the open woodlands of Kafue National Park in west-central Zambia, away from the pack they’d grown up in. Roughly two weeks earlier, four of their sisters had also left the pack. One dog in each of the groups was wearing a GPS collar fitted and monitored by a team of researchers from the Zambian Carnivore Programme, Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, and other partners. The tracking data showed that the females headed northward, into a game management area (GMA), a partially protected buffer zone adjacent to the park. But their brothers, known to the researchers as the Mayukuyuku males, entered an unprotected area east of Kafue, then turned north toward the cities of Kitwe and Ndola. The two dispersing groups were doing what wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) tend to do when they reach the age of around 3 years old. They break from their birth packs and head out in search of territory and mates to form packs of their own. But it’s also extremely risky behavior. “A good way to die, if you’re an African wild dog, is to leave your pack,” said Scott Creel, an ecologist at Montana State University in the U.S. and lead author of a new study recording these and other epic wild dogs movements across Zambia. But, he added, the alternative is also grim: “A good way to never reproduce is to stay in your pack.” African wild dogs in…This article was originally published on Mongabay