Jakarta: Fires in Indonesia fueled partly by a strong El Nino have burned through 2.88 million hectares so far in 2026, according to a monitor analysing satellite imagery. The burned area figure has increased nearly a million hectares since deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas's last update in September.

Indonesia's government has not provided official figures for areas burned since announcing 202,000 hectares had been razed by the end of July. Nusantara Atlas founder David Gaveau warned the burning detected through the end of October is a conservative estimate, partly because smoke has obscured satellite images, but it already exceeds the full-year figure for 2019, previously the worst year on record in the group's data.

Indonesia also experienced devastating fires in 2015, but the satellite imagery used then was different, making a direct comparison difficult. Still, Gaveau said the scale of destruction is clear: "Basically, it's a really bad year."

The arrival of rain has brought some of the worst blazes under control, and monitoring shows the number of so-called hotspots starting to flatten or decline.

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