Is Philippine biodiversity wasted on Filipinos?



To the scores of bird lovers around the world, the reports must have made Filipinos appear like savages. That's why I'm a tad ambivalent about the international notoriety of my documentary team's accidental discovery of a bird species that some ornithologists had suspected might be extinct, and had never been documented in the wild. The next day this precious specimen was bought and cooked for someone's ailing mother in law.

Typical was this headline on the National Geographic web site: Rare Worcester's Buttonquail Bird Photographed, Then Eaten!

You could almost hear the what-the-f--k! reactions in countries where a discovery like this would lead to calls for a bird sanctuary around the spot where the bird was trapped.

I have also been taken to task by some blog readers for allowing it happen. To be fair though, not being a bird expert, I had no idea at the time of what was just caught by native bird trappers in the Caraballo Mountains in Nueva Vizcaya. It was so rare that even the professional bird guide accompanying us was not able to identify it, although he had a hunch about the species which he immediately dismissed, thinking that was too remote a possibility and speculating it was a more common bird. (By the way, the report by the Agence France Presse that circulated around the world was wrong: we did not find it in some poultry market, but in a trapper's net soon after it was captured). It took another bird expert in Manila to confirm that it was indeed the long-lost species.

The announcement of the discovery was then made, along with the bird's shameful fate. Just as Oscar Wilde once said that youth was wasted on the young, the more prejudiced could be thinking, Philippine biodiversity is wasted on Filipinos!

Fortunately, that's not the whole picture. First, there's a growing cadre of hard-core Filipino bird lovers who are fast turning on the rest of the population to the idea that wild birds are there for watching and not killing. My documentary's first part is actually about them.



Secondly, Philippine news about other wild creatures reflect a more evolved attitude. Take for example the recent strandings of hundreds of melon-headed whales in Bataan and Romblon, which also made CNN and other international news outlets. In another time, the close proximity of helpless animals could have led to mass slaughter. But this time, nearby fisherfolk were among those who led the marine mammals to deeper, safer waters.


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The rescue and release of sea turtles are now so common they rarely make the news.

This creeping culture of caring for the wild has been a long time coming. WWF vice chair Lory Tan credits media for it, which is partly right. But just as much credit must go to the advocates like himself who were already championing the protection of the wild when this cause was considered quaint and marginal by the local media. Now there's an entire show about it, Born to be Wild.


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