Wildfires tearing through Indonesian Borneo have already burned more than 200,000 hectares of land this year, forcing desperate public appeals on social media for international firefighting help as smoke from West Kalimantan drifts across the border and chokes Malaysia's Sarawak state.
One widely shared appeal describes the region's rainforest as 'a vital lung of the Earth' and calls on the EU, UK, China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore to send fire suppression technology, monitoring tools and cost assessments.
The plea comes as Indonesia enters what meteorologists have identified as the critical run-up to its historical September-to-October fire peak, with this year's El Niño-driven drought already outpacing the hotspot accumulation rates seen in the 2015, 2019 and 2023 fire seasons.
The alarm has been sharpened by images from West Kalimantan's Ketapang district, where a wildfire came within around 100 metres of the Yayasan IAR Indonesia (YIARI) orangutan rehabilitation centre, home to more than 60 critically endangered Bornean orangutans rescued from the illegal wildlife trade.
Nearly 100 personnel from government agencies, the military, police and YIARI fought the blaze with water-bombing aircraft and ground crews.
Centre director Dr Karmele Llano Sánchez said the fight had been relentless. 'We were fighting it until 3am, but this morning it has reignited,' she said.
'The teams are working round the clock but they are exhausted.' The organisation said all of its orangutans remained safe and under close veterinary monitoring throughout, and it is now seeking donations for additional firefighting equipment.
The appeal for outside help lands against a stark funding backdrop. Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) is operating in 2026 on a budget of 491 billion rupiah, around $27.5 million, a cut of roughly 76 per cent from the 2.01 trillion rupiah, or $113 million, it received in 2025, its lowest funding level in 15 years.
The reduction has drawn criticism given that the government has continued funding President Prabowo Subianto's free school meals programme, whose budget, though also repeatedly trimmed this year, still stood at 229 trillion rupiah, around $12.8 billion, as of July.
Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni said cloud-seeding crews remain on standby but are constrained by the weather. 'Should there be even the slightest trace of a cloud suitable for seeding, and provided it is technically feasible to seed it, we will carry out a weather modification operation,' he told reporters in Palangkaraya.
Antoni also said President Prabowo had instructed that firefighting funding be topped up wherever shortfalls emerge, telling officials the government would 'add the budget if it is lacking' to ensure the state protects citizens from the fires.
Indonesian authorities have separately urged the public to avoid setting fires and to remain vigilant as the dry season deepens.
The transboundary smoke has already disrupted daily life across the border. Six schools in Sarawak switched to online classes on 12 August as air quality deteriorated to 'very unhealthy' levels in the district of Tebedu, and Sarawak's capital, Kuching, was ranked the world's most polluted major city on 11 August by monitoring firm IQAir.
Singapore's 28-agency Haze Task Force, chaired by the National Environment Agency, says it is ready to roll out response plans, including mask stockpiles and air purifiers for vulnerable groups, should the city-state's own air quality deteriorate.
Nationally, more than 154,000 hotspots had been recorded by 11 August, and wildfires had burned through more than 200,000 hectares of land since January, almost double the area scorched in the first half of the year alone.