Two critically endangered Sumatran rhinos are pregnant at an Indonesian sanctuary, a rare success for a species reduced to a few dozen animals in the wild. The pregnancies also highlight the genetic constraints facing the country’s captive-breeding program. Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry and the NGO Yayasan Badak Indonesia (YABI), which manages the sanctuary, announced the pregnancies on Oct. 3. A female named Ratu is carrying her fourth calf, fathered by Andalas, while her daughter Delilah is carrying her second calf, fathered by Harapan. Both are due around May 2027. Ratu was captured from the wild in Sumatra in 2005, while Andalas and Harapan, who are full brothers, were born at Cincinnati Zoo in the U.S. in 2001 and 2007, respectively. Delilah was born to Ratu and Andalas at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in 2016 — meaning the father of Delilah’s calf is her paternal uncle. Experts at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary seek to pair the least-related males and females possible, Nina Fascione, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation, told Mongabay in an email. They also must consider factors such as differences in body size, she said, but their choices are limited by the small number of rhinos under human care. The 11 animals in Indonesia’s breeding program are the only captive Sumatran rhinos in the world, and all of the males in the program are related. “The current critical situation outweighs the genetic diversity considerations,” Fascione said. Ratu, a captive female Sumatran rhino, is expecting her fourth calf. Image…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Wildfires in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, are leaving wildlife without fresh water as ponds turn brackish and forest pools dry up, driving animals into villages and toward the coast. Residents and conservation groups are responding by providing water, rescuing affected animals and treating them as smoke and fires continue to affect their habitat. Preliminary findings by NGO Yayasan Planet Indonesia recorded at least 16 dead animals, including silvered langurs (Trachypithecus cristatus), long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) and proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus, an endangered primate found only on Borneo), from early August through late September amid an intense fire season in coastal Kubu Raya, a district in West Kalimantan. That compares to 13 dead non-fish animals recorded during nearly six years of SMART patrols — a system for monitoring wildlife and threats in the forest — in the area, from September 2020 through June 2026, with most deaths attributed to natural causes or left unexplained. As freshwater pools dried up and village ponds turned brackish, Planet Indonesia found dehydrated wildlife moving closer to homes and the coast in search of water. “We have never had findings like this before,” said Adam Miller, co-founder of Planet Indonesia, in a statement sent to Mongabay. The NGO has worked alongside the village institutions in Kubu Raya since 2017. “When the mangroves lose their fresh water, the animals die,” Miller said. A long-tailed macaque found dead on Sept. 14 by SMART patrol team. Image courtesy of Yayasan Planet Indonesia. On Sept. 20, a patrol found a silvered…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Indigenous activist and filmmaker Kynan Tegar joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss the impacts of the fires devastating Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. Some 48,000 hectares (about 119,000 acres) of land have burned so far this year; Kynan says these fires are intentional on the part of agricultural corporations. “The process that has gotten us to this point right now, where fires are raging through the island, it’s a process that started maybe you can draw the line up to the 1970s, which was around the time where the Indonesian New Order period regime of Suharto was leasing out a lot of lands as concessions to companies,” she says. “A lot of times it’s logging, it’s palm oil concessions, it’s also gold mines.” Corporations have drained more than 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of peatland, she says. But the impact, she says, that isn’t receiving as much attention is the decreased access to freshwater for Indigenous and local communities, which both climate change and El Niño are making worse. “It’s quite an ironic thing. Like, it’s one of the world’s biggest rainforest[s], and a lot of the people there are struggling for water. So that, on top of the conditions created by the massive wildfires that has been happening since July … has put a lot of the people there in strain,” she says. Kynan released a spoken-word music video in 2024 to dramatize and tell the story of her community, Sungai Utik,…This article was originally published on Mongabay