Mining and logging threaten a wildlife wonderland on a Philippine mountain
Mount Busa on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is among the most biodiverse and most threatened ecological areas in the country.
It’s a key biodiversity area and a known bird conservation area, considered one of the last remaining strongholds of the critically endangered and nationally important Philippine eagle (Phitecophaga jefferyi).
Despite its ecological importance, the mountain has enjoyed little protection, with only the topmost slopes falling under a local conservation zone.
To protect the area, environmentalists and local officials are pushing to legalize and strengthen the mountain’s protection by including it in the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas Systems (E-NIPAS).
It’s well known that the Philippines is a biodiversity hotspot, its 7641 islands holding a vast array of flora and fauna, many yet unrecorded, all of them rapidly disappearing. But despite this being common knowledge, the importance of this doesn’t usually hit home until a new species is discovered.
Yvette Natalie Tan
The Busa Mountain Range (BMR) straddles the provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato in southern Mindanao.
According to Kier Mitchel E. Pitogo, resident wildlife biologist and project development officer of the PASu AVPL, “it is one of the last remaining primary forests in the region.”
A primary forest is a forest whose ecology hasn’t been disturbed by human activity and thus, contains flora and fauna native to the region.
Pitologo recently assisted Aljohn Jay Saavedra, resident botanist and Forest Extension Officer of the Protected Area Superintendent office of the Allah Valley Protected Landscape (PASu AVPL) in DENR-PENRO South Cotabato, in a research expedition to catalogue amphibian and reptile species in the area. They encountered so many orchid species during this time that they also ended up publishing another paper called “Richness and Distribution of Orchids (Orchidaceae) in the Forests of Mount Busa, Sarangani, Southern Mindanao, Philippines�