The Philippines is recognized by major conservation organizations as a high priority for urgent conservation action, consistently appearing in the top five hottest hotspots on the basis of numbers of threatened endemic species and percentage of remaining original vegetation, combined with its relatively small size. The country has high levels of endemism arising from its geological history, but its wildlife and environments are facing huge pressures from widespread habitat loss, ineffective implementation of wildlife laws and low community awareness across all sectors of society of the uniqueness of their wildlife.
Although the Philippines’ wildlife laws are designed to protect its environment and wildlife, it suffers from a chronic lack of capacity to implement those laws. This is exacerbated in remote rural areas, where people are poor and government services are inadequate. Further, in recent decades, civil insurgency in some parts of the country has made protection and studies of wildlife difficult.
These issues are especially pertinent in the West Visayan Faunal Region, in the Philippines’ south-west, which is considered to be one of the highest priority regions in the Philippines due to its high number of threatened endemics and extreme habitat loss. On the four main islands of Negros, Panay, Cebu and Masbate, the average amount of remaining forest is in the order of 3%. Panay Island offers the best option for long-term habitat protection, in light of it still having 6% original forest cover and most of that as sizeable patches (at least 30,000ha each) left in the west and north, and relatively small human populations in those areas.
Sustaining wildlife conservation in the Philippines has proved to be problematic, but a growing number of community-based programs are demonstrating that this can be achieved. These are making use of the Local Government Code, a far-sighted piece of legislation passed in 1990 and which enables power and responsibility for managing community affairs, including natural resource management, to be devolved to local communities, rather than being retained at the national or provincial level. This will be a key factor in the planned creation of three Local Conservation Areas in northern Panay.
Zoos Victoria's conservation field partners
Our key field partners are Fauna & Flora International and the West Visayas State University (WVSU). FFI is the world's longest established international conservation body, founded over 100 years ago. FFI focuses on solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take account of human needs. ZV has a Memorandum of Understanding with FFI and has supported FFI's Philippines Conservation Program since 1994.
The WVSU was established in 1924 and is a premier university in the West Visayan region, with a strong vocational focus.
