🦧🔥 Borneo is burning, and Irene is one of the lucky ones. Irene, a baby orangutan, was pulled out of a fire zone in West Kalimantan with her mom. Many others never make it out. Why is it burning? Most of these fires are set on purpose. Every dry season, forest is burned to clear land, often for palm oil. Peat swamps used to be wet enough to resist fire. Decades of clearing and drainage canals dried them out. Now they catch easily and can smoulder underground for weeks, which makes them extremely hard to put out. What it means for orangutans: Orangutans live in the treetops. When the canopy burns, their routes to food and safety disappear. They end up stranded in plantations, starving, choking on smoke, and in conflict with humans. This isn't old news. In under a month this season, rescuers pulled at least 9 orangutans out of fire zones in Ketapang alone. One male was found collapsed from dehydration and smoke. The flames even got within about 1 km of IAR's rescue center, which cares for hundreds of orangutans. 📉 The Bornean orangutan is Critically Endangered, down more than 80% in three generations. That's why we collect donations. We created $Irene to collect frunds through trnasactuon fees. These are then directly sent to the charity of @IAR_updates via donate.gg