Indonesia forest fires burned through nearly 2.9 million hectares

Detailed summary

The burned area figure -- 18 times the size of London -- has increased nearly a million hectares since deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas's last update in September.

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The burned area figure -- 18 times the size of London -- has increased nearly a million hectares since deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas's last update in September.

ires in Indonesia driven partly by a strong El Nino have burned through 2.88 million hectares (7.1 million acres) so far in 2026, a monitor analysing satellite imagery told AFP on Wednesday.

The burned area figure -- 18 times the size of London -- has increased nearly a million hectares since deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas's last update in September.

Satellite data from Nusantara Atlas showed recently that Indonesia's cumulative burned area was 895,650 hectares (2.2 million acres) in August, and jumped to 1.92 million hectares (4.74 million acres) by the end of September.

That surpassed the 1.39 million hectares cumulatively burned at the same point in 2019, a year when fires ultimately scorched 2.63 million hectares of land

There were 1.15 million fire hotspots across Indonesia as of October 20, according to the Nusantara Atlas fire map

The government has not provided official figures for areas burned since announcing 202,000 hectares had been razed by the end of July.

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Opening of the article, excerpted from The Jakarta Post. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.