A Greater Flameback Woodpecker. The mountains of the Andanan Watershed are full of rare and beautiful wildlife which has never been researched or documented.
One source of funding VSO is able to access for its projects here in the Philippines comes from the EU under a development programme on sharing and promoting of regional knowledge. I recently put in a project proposal to get help from Mindanao State University (MSU) to carry out species identification in the Andanan watershed area. Peviously no real information has been available on what species of birds, bats, snakes et cetera are present in the area, and what is in danger of being lost if the defeorestation of the area continues. We were lucky and funding for the proposal was approved - 255,800 Pisos or around 2,800 pounds.
However, that was only the start of things. There were still lots of hurdles to jump and hoops to leap through before we could start the work. One of the most important of these was obtaining the consent of the indigenous peoples who live in the area. This involved meetings with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, then with the Datus (Tribal Chieftans), and finally we had to hold community meetings.
Datus (tribal chiefans) and Barangay (village) officials sit around the table at the pre-project meeting. The community members listen from behind. Manobo Datus traditionally wear red jackets or have red banding on their clothes. It is also traditional for food to provided at meetings, so we had to feed about 200 people !
MSU had tried to go through this process last november, but unfortunately they were unaware of the best way to explain the project to the indigenous people of the area. As a result, the way the project was explained to the indigenous people (IPs) didn’t make it clear why they should give their permission, and what the benefits to them would be from the project. Since the IPs are very protective of their rights and access to their lands, they therefore refused permission in November.
In January I approached the Provincial Officer for the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, who is based at the Provincial Capitol where I work. He gave us good advice on the correct process to follow, and put us in touch with the Regional NCIP Office in Butuan. Together they guided us through the procedures for meeting the legal requirement for obtaining the Free Prior Informed Consent of the IPs before carrying out research in thie tribal lands. The Provincial Officer even facilitated a new set of meetings with the datus, Barangay (village) officials, and the communities to explain why the project was needed.
During these meetings, he explained the project to the tribal groups in their own language (Manobo) as well as Visayan, and clearly explained how the project on biodiversity would help the IPs to prepare their Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development Plan – an important requirement of the process of getting their ancestral lands recognised in a Certificate of Ancestal Domain Title.
The end result as that the indigenous people agreed to the project going ahead, and agreed to offer their protction to the researchers from Mindanao State University while they were carrying out the work. This was formalised by all the Datus and Barangay officials signing a document agreeing to the researchers entering their area to conduct the research. However, educational facilities in the remote mountain areas are limited both by physical distance from schools and lack of money for families to pay for their children to be educated, and were even more limited when the current Datus were of school age. As a result, many of the Datus’ ’signatures’ were in the form of a thumbprint.
‘Signing’ the agreement. An elderly Datu appends his thumbprint.
The agreement of the datus, officials and communities to guarantee the safety of the researchers was of particular importance, as the researchers would have to camp in the forest overnight in order to catch and identify nocturnal species such as bats, some bird species, frogs, etc. As there are members of the New Peoples Army (communist insurgents) in the mountains of Mindanao, it was necessary that the researchers be under the protection of the community, especially while staying overnight in the mountain forests.
So, with their safety assured and the ‘red tape’ complied with, we were able at last to begin the research to identify the biodiversity of the mountain forests of the Andanan Watershed.
A warning sign on the access road into the watershed, at a site subject to major landslides during every rainy season.
Only the natural hazards such as snakes and landslides remained to be negotiated !
A large rat snake. One of the many species of snake present in the forests.
