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The raging wildfire on Indonesia’s Borneo island has left orangutans writhing on the ground, fighting to even breathe.

On Sunday, a farmer in the Ketapang area in West Kalimantan found an orangutan in need of rescue on a palm-oil plantation near the wildfire.

“It was very weak and I gave it water,” the farmer, identified by his first name Jais, said.

The incident occurred less than three weeks after flames came within metres of a rehabilitation centre housing more than 60 critically endangered Bornean orangutans rescued from illegal wildlife trade and habitat loss. The facility is run by a nonprofit called Yiari.

Bornean orangutans are a critically endangered species. Their populations have declined by more than 50 per cent over the past 60 years and their habitats have been shrunk by at least 55 per cent over the past 20 years, largely due to hunting and logging.

There are only about 120,000 Bornean remaining in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The primates are now found exclusively on the island of Borneo, which is held in part by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei.

The orangutan is known for the shaggy red or orange coat that covers nearly its whole body, though its face, ears, palms, and soles of the feet are without hair.

Borneo orangutans are listed as critically endangered species (PA)

Indonesia is battling intense haze from forest and landfires burning across six provinces on Borneo and Sumatra islands.

The wildfire on Borneo started on 22 July in Ketapang district, forcing thousands of schools to move classes online, including in neighbouring Malaysia.

Authorities said they were on alert as they worked to contain the damage and avoid a repeat of 2015, when raging fires caused widespread devastation in the archipelago.

Orangutan is rescued from the fire zone in Borneo, Indonesia (Reuters)

The ape helped by the farmer was named Sampurna after the village it was found in. It had fainted due to the lack of oxygen.

“The orangutan got hypoxia because of the very thick smoke in the area,” said Karmele Llano Sanchez, chief executive of Yiari.

The orangutan, estimated to be 20 years old, didn’t get any severe burn-related injuries, Komara, a veterinarian who tended to the ape, said. “We suspected it was suffering from an acute respiratory infection.”

Orangutan is given food through an intravenous drip (Reuters)

The veterinarian gave the orangutan oxygen through a small tube placed in its nose and fluids through intravenous drip, with a makeshift infusion bag hanging from a ​palm-oil frond.

It will be moved to the rehabilitation centre for further treatment and released back into the wild after its recovery.

Ms Sanchez said that the government should ​not only focus on containing the fires, but prepare for the long-term effects on public health, forests and wildlife.

Argitoe Ranting, program operations director of wildlife foundation Yayasan Inisiasi Alam Rehabilitasi Indonesia, along with other rescuers, carries a cage with an orangutan named Sampurna, before being transported to the rehabilitation center (Reuters)

In August, after the fires had burned for a few weeks, thick smoke blanketed the area near Yiari’s rehabilitation centre and its workers fought for hours to stop the flames from reaching the facility.

“The fire reached the boundary of the rehabilitation centre’s land,” Ms Sánchez told Mongabay. “If we hadn’t responded quickly, part of our rehabilitation center might already have been destroyed by the fire.”

In July, conservationists had rescued a male orangutan, named Wak, after he wandered into a fruit plantation at Kuala Tolak village near Ketapang.

“This orangutan came out because its habitat has been disturbed,” a villager identified only as Morsali said. “There has been a lot of land clearing, and now it’s the dry season, with fires everywhere. It came looking for a safe place to find food and shelter because its habitat is no longer safe.”

An excavator digs a trench in an attempt to extinguish a wildfire in the Tumbang Nusa area of Pulang Pisau (AFP/Getty)

In a renewed attempt to curb the fires and prevent the smoke from spreading, authorities deployed cloud-seeding and firefighting planes across the five provinces of Borneo, home to vast stretches of fire-prone peatland.

Wildfires destroyed nearly 95,000 hectares of land across Indonesia in July, nearly doubling the damage done over the previous six months, as average temperatures for the month rose to their highest in 35 years.

Hotspots crossed over 9,000 in August, far higher than the 5,077 in the same month in 2015, though still well below the all-time monthly high of 17,302 in ​October of that year, according to ​the forestry ministry’s fire-monitoring service ⁠Sipongi.