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ires that razed extensive forest areas and peat lands in Sumatra and Kalimantan over the past few weeks have caused local residents to struggle with deteriorating air quality and have instigated cases of conflict with animals displaced from their natural habitat.

In West Tanjung Jabung regency, Jambi, forest fires in the Betara district forced a wild sun bear to escape from its habitat and roam a neighborhood in Serdang Jaya subdistrict, damaging residents'€™ houses.

'€œSome 20 houses have been damaged because of the bear'€™s attack,'€ subdistrict head Darmayulis said on Friday, adding that the bear usually entered the neighborhood at night.

Swiss-based environmental organization the International Union for Conservation Nature (IUCN) has listed the sun bear as a vulnerable species since 2008.

According to the IUCN, tropical evergreen rainforests are the sun bear'€™s main habitat on the islands of Borneo, Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia. The bears are unlikely to survive in deforested areas or in agricultural areas with no nearby forest.

Darmayulis said the bear had also attacked houses in the neighboring Pematang Buluh and Muntialo subdistricts. He said that he had reported the case to the Jambi Provincial Natural Resource Conservation Agency (BKSDA), which later provided local residents with wild animal traps to catch the bear.

BKSDA head Abdul Haris Sudjoko confirmed that the ongoing peat land and forest fires in the province had led to potential conflicts between displaced animals and local residents.

'€œRecently, we have received a number of reports regarding encounters between local residents and wild animals, including elephants, crocodiles and bears,'€ Haris said.

Over the past few months, many regions in Indonesia, including Riau, Jambi, North Sumatra, South Sumatra and Central Kalimantan, have been struggling to cope with the impact of smoke produced by both man-made and natural land and forest fires.

The ongoing disaster has been exacerbated by this year'€™s long dry season, triggered by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

In South Sumatra, haze caused 3,074 people in the Ogan Ilir regency to suffer from acute respiratory infections (ISPA) in September alone.

Ogan Ilir Health Agency'€™s disease mitigation section head Mulyadi said community health centers (Puskesmas) across the region were prepared to work a round the clock to help local residents who needed emergency medical assistance due to haze-related diseases.

In West Sumatra, thick haze had decreased visibility in the Padang, Bukittingi and Padang Panjang municipalities below 900 meters, according to Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) Padang station spokesperson Budi Iman Samiaji.

The BMKG also reported that Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, had become the city with the worst air quality in the country after its level of particulate matter (PM10) was measured at over 1000 µg/m3 on Friday afternoon.

According to the government'€™s existing guidelines, air quality is considered '€œhealthy'€ if its PM10 level stands below 50 µg/m³, '€œmoderate'€ when the level stands between 50 and 150 µg/m³, '€œunhealthy'€ between 150 and 350 µg/m³, '€œvery unhealthy'€ between 350 and 420 µg/m³ and '€œdangerous'€ when it surpasses 420 µg/m³.

Meanwhile in Boyolali, Central Java, local authorities have also struggled to put out fires that have razed the forests on the slope of Mount Merbabu since Sept. 27.

The fires, as of Friday, had burned some 270 hectares of land including a protected forest and agricultural fields in Ampel district.

An Air Tractor AT-802F aircraft was deployed to help extinguish the fires by dropping water bombs.

'€œThe bombing was started on Thursday afternoon. Three hours later some of the fires were extinguished. Today [Friday], we are checking the affected areas while at the same time extinguishing remaining fires we find along our way,'€ Mount Merbabu Park head Wisnu Wibowo said.

Ganug Nugroho Adi from Boyolali contributed to this article