Gembong Hanung, Jakarta – Raging fires have scorched a number of national parks in Kalimantan and Sumatra in recent weeks, with fast-spreading blazes threatening an orangutan population inside a park in Central Kalimantan, where volunteer firefighters found themselves overwhelmed with limited resources.
Against the backdrop of charred Tanjung Puting National Park, the volunteers recently addressed an open letter to President Prabowo Subianto, demanding large-scale firefighting assistance for the 412,000-hectare park.
"We've decided to back down from the fire scenes because our capacity could not outpace the raging fires anymore," a 29-year old volunteer, who goes by his nickname Moncos, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The decision, he added, was made last Saturday, as the 60-member volunteer network faced persistent resource constraints and limited access to water. They asked the government to launch greater intervention to battle the blazes at the park.
Around 54,000 ha of the park, or an area nearly the size of Jakarta, have so far been burned, Moncos said, citing data from a local conservation group. The burning has reportedly reached multiple zones of the park, including a vital conservation corridor known as a "core zone".
Peatland-rich Tanjung Puting is a key habitat for Bornean orangutans, and is often cited as having the largest population of the endangered apes in the world.
The open letter video has now gained traction online, garnering more than five million views on Instagram and sparking more pressure for Jakarta to step up its efforts in battling the fires.
Responding to the situation in Tanjung Puting, the Forestry Ministry said on Monday that worsening haze had hampered aerial operations around the park, though joint firefighting personnel continued to be deployed to contain blazes through land operations. The ministry has yet to confirm the size of the burned areas.
Forest and peatland fires have ravaged large swaths of Indonesia, triggering a regional haze crisis and displacing dozens of endangered animals. Blazes have also entered other parks, including Sebangau in Central Kalimantan and Gunung Palung in West Kalimantan.
As of Sept. 29, there had been 254 animals rescued from fire zones across Kalimantan and Sumatra, according to the ministry.
Since late August, at least 20,336 ha of the Berbak-Sembilang National Park, a UNESCO-recognized biosphere reserve in Jambi and South Sumatra, had also been razed by fire, according to a monitoring by the Warsi Indonesian Conservation Community (KKI Warsi).
"Some massive peat fires spiraled out of control and grew harder to contain," the group's communication manager Rudi Syaf said on Monday, recalling major fires that broke out in recent days.
Joint firefighting operations are still underway, according to the park's office.
Uli Arta Siagian, campaign coordinator of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said fires inside national parks had underscored the urgency to recognize the conservation roles of indigenous and local communities, whose access is often cut off from the parks.
"The state's capacity to monitor and protect all of the existing parks alone is actually falling short," she said.
Prabowo on Monday gathered several high-ranking officials, including those from the military, the police, the Forestry Ministry and the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), at the State Palace to address the regional haze crisis and fires inside Tanjung Puting park.
His administration is currently also facing a lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil society groups in West Kalimantan, which accuse them of deliberate negligence in preventing and handling the wildfires in the province, an accusation the Palace recently denied.