Elephants deployed to fight Indonesia fires

Officials in Indonesia’s Riau province are now using trained elephants outfitted with water pumps and hoses to help control forest fires.

Elephants in Indonesia. Image by Vincent Poulissen / CC BY-SA 2.0

Previously trained to help patrol forests to find people encroaching illegally, and help to drive wild elephants that enter human settlements back to their habitats, the elephants and their crews are now tasked with patrolling burned areas in the national forest to ensure that fires don’t reappear after smouldering beneath the peat lands. The province in East Sumatra has been blanketed by smoke from forest fires and land clearing for more than three months. Indonesia has been unable to control the blazes, caused predominantly by intentional burning and exacerbated by a lack of rain. Read more: thejakartapost.com