Philippine Forest: Hotspot of Hope
Added to website: 18 April 2004
The Philippines is a mega-biodiversity hotspot and has higher percentages of endemism than any other biogeographic province in the whole of the Indo-Malayan Realm. Over 57% of species in the major faunal and floral groups occur nowhere else in the world. With more than 40% of the country’s bird species endemic, Birdlife International currently identifies Negros Island as an Endemic Bird Area (EBA) and the North Negros Forest Reserve (NNFR) as an Important Bird Area (IBA).
Despite the country’s obvious ecological importance, it also has one of the highest numbers of threatened restricted range species. This is largely due to intense deforestation across the Philippines leaving only forest remnants to support endemic biodiversity, resulting in serious declines within bird communities. For example, on Negros Island, only 4% of the original forest remains, largely in mountain areas (above 700m). Yet over half of the 190 resident bird species are known to be forest dependent.
Recent surveys by CCC Volunteers on the Negros Rainforest Conservation Project have revealed that over 130 bird species have been recorded within a small watershed area of the montane forests of the NNFR. This included an extremely high number of forest-dependent bird species and approximately 65% of all species (and sub-species) recorded were Philippine endemics.
The inventory has been completed over a two-year period and recorded many restricted range species, only found on a handful of islands within the Philippines. These include species such as the Visayan Tarictic hornbill (Penelopides panini panini), a species that is also one of seven IUCN Red Listed species recorded in the watershed.
Additional survey work by CCC has found that reforested areas contain over 75% of the forest-dependent and endemic bird species typically found in undisturbed areas of this montane forest. The study compared old-growth forest areas with restored forest areas that had once been clear felled, 20 years previously. Additional sites, which still represent severely degraded forest, had less than half of the species located at the old-growth sites.
Species inhabiting the restored areas again included many restricted range, endemic and threatened species. These included the Philippine Hawk-Eagle (Spizaetus philippensis), an endemic eagle that is historically rare and has previously been recorded on only twelve of the seven thousand islands in the Philippines. The Visayan Flowerpecker (Dicaeum haematostictum) and the Rufous-lored Kingfisher (Halcyon winchelli) were also recorded. Both are normally restricted to lower altitude forest and until recently, the latter was thought to be extinct on Negros.
The area surveyed forms one of the last significant remaining areas of moist tropical forest in the central Philippines. This habitat is currently listed as the eighth most vulnerable forest eco-region in the world. A full version of this article was published in the December 2003 issue of Birdwatch (www.birdwatch.co.uk).
