Source : INQ7.net, Philippines, 07 Nov '05
By : Blanche S. Rivera
  

"What the people of Samar are saying is that if the senator really loves the Philippines, he must be gracious enough to bequeath Samar as a heritage area," development expert Minerva G. Gonzales told the Inquirer.

Gonzales was coordinator of a project to preserve the ecological wealth of the Philippines' third largest island of Samar whose people are fighting to keep its forests from logging operations that once depleted its rich depository of endemic flora and fauna.

What the world has hailed as the refuge of threatened plants and animals is shaping to become a crucial battleground for a threatened people.

Samar is one of the few places in the country where the people themselves-many of them highly dependent on the forests for a living-have abandoned their old way of life and moved toward conservation for the sake of the species that also make the island's forests their home.

This sacrifice laid the foundation for the establishment of the 333,000-hectare Samar Island Nature Park (SINP), which comprises a third of the island's 1.34-million-ha area.

Samar's significance as an ecological area has been thrown into focus by a recent government decision to open up an area covered by SINP to a logging firm of Enrile.

The SINP is a component of the $12.8-million Samar Island Biodiversity Project (SIBP) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), United Nations Development Fund, US Agency for International Development, the Philippine government and nongovernment organizations.

"This project, dealing as it does with a very important biogeographical area in a country which is highly stressed environmentally, has very high global environmental benefits," GEF consultant Peter Raven said in his review of the project proposal in 1999.

He recommended the funding of the SIBP to the GEF, an international funding agency that supports only projects with global significance to biodiversity conservation.

"This is, in my mind, an almost perfect GEF project and, in that sense, is highly innovative ... I find this one of the best in terms of its plans for sustainability," he said in his scientific and technical review.

Samar is listed by the World Wildlife Fund as one of the world's 200 eco-regions for its rich biodiversity. It is also one of 18 plant diversity centers, hosting 12 of the world's threatened tree species.

Found in its contiguous lowland forests are 2,400 species of flowering plants, 406 of which are endemic or found only in the region; 39 species of mammals, most of which are forest dependent; 25 reptile species, and 12 amphibian species.

Philippine eagle

Samar has also been named as one of the nine endemic bird areas in the Philippines.

The Philippine eagle was first discovered in the forests of Paranas, Samar in 1896. Experts have said that the island, which has some 360,000 ha of unfragmented lowland forests, could have the highest population of the endangered Philippine eagle in the country.

The Philippine eagle, known to be a very territorial species, needs an area of 3,000 ha to fly.

Samar is also home to the threatened Philippine Hawk Eagle and the Philippine Cockatoo, along with 194 other bird species, of which 50 are found only in the Philippines.

The Acerodon jubatus, the largest bat in the world, rests in Samar's forests as well.

"The big danger is the loss of biodiversity when the forests are touched. These species could be completely lost if the forests go," Gonzales, project coordinator of the preparatory phase of SIBP, said in an interview.

Strictly protected area

Gonzales headed the team from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources that spent three years-1998 to 2001-working on the proposal that was eventually approved by the international funding agencies.

She criticized the DENR's recent decision allowing a logging firm of Enrile to cut trees in a 95,770-ha area covered by the SINP, a protected area.

San Jose Timber Corp.'s TLA area not only fell within the SINP. It was right at the heart of the strict protection zone, an area that bans all kinds of activities, even eco-tourism to ensure protection for natural growth trees, environmentalists contend.

Church and environment groups have joined forces in opposing the resumption of logging operations, saying this would threaten the water supply on the whole island and make the people vulnerable to massive flooding.

Environment Secretary Michael T. Defensor signed the order upholding SJTC's TLA on Aug. 16. He also extended the TLA's effectivity by another 16 years to compensate for the revenues lost by Enrile's firm since the logging moratorium in 1989.

"They saw it from a very narrow perspective," said Gonzales, who is now working for another institution.

Pullout threat

"The TLA has been superseded by other events, the proclamation of the area as a forest reserve in 1996, the agreement between the UNDP and the Philippine government and the proclamation of the SINP," she said.

The UNDP-GEF is inclined to pull out funding for the second phase of the project if logging operations resume as authorized by the DENR, sources have said.

"Samar is one of the biggest GEF projects in the country. It would be a black spot for the Philippines if funding is pulled out," Gonzales said.

The second phase of the SIBP, which would run from December 2007 to 2009, entails the establishment of the park center and administrative office, the strengthening of local government capability to manage the nature park and the inclusion of conservation in future development projects.

Gonzales said the 200,000 households in the 35 municipalities covering the SINP had stopped kaingin and other invasive livelihood activities to ensure the forests' regrowth.

The previously forest-dependent communities have opened up to eco-tourism and harvesting of non-timber forest products to support themselves.

All that is a heritage of ecological wealth Enrile can bequeath to his people, Gonzales said.