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By Katrina
April Mennen A. Valdez, Reporter
Five years
ago, the people in Donsol, Sorsogon, hunted whale sharks (Rhincodon
typus) for a living. The town’s residents would slaughter the sea
animals and sell the meat which, as a delicacy, fetched a good
price.
The people of
Donsol have since come to realize it is more profitable to protect
whale sharks than slaughter them. Today the town is a popular
tourist destination for whale watching, and Time Magazine once
featured Donsol as the best interaction experience with marine
mammals in the whole world.
But there is a
worrying counterpoint to Donsol’s success story.
Last January
rangers in the Tubbataha Marine Park arrested 30 Chinese fishermen
for catching 800 live fish, including 300 of the endangered mameng
(Napoleon Wrasse) inside the sanctuary.
The incident
highlighted the festering issue of foreign fishermen poaching in the
country’s protected waters.
“The
Philippines is the favorite place of the illegal poachers, simply
because they think that our law is too lenient,” Malcolm Sarmiento,
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources director general, said.
The case took
a strange turn after Sarmiento and other officials were charged with
contempt for refusing to release the fishermen’s boat.
“This is
what I’m pointing out. Even the government officials have been
charged with contempt for refusing to let go the boat and declined
to free the mamengs until such a time that they are safe enough,”
Lory Tan, executive director of World Wildlife Fund Philippines,
said.
Tan sees the
country’s wildlife as being besieged by crisis. “It is not only
a problem of saving endangered species anymore. It is already a
wide-scale predicament. Together we have to take action to protect
our environment. Saving endangered species is only a part of the
whole problem,” Tan said in a phone interview.
The
Philippines is considered to have the 17th most megadiverse
environment in the world. Forty-four percent of its bird species and
64 percent of its mammals are unique to the country.
Yet, the
country has been cited as one of the biggest “hot spots” in
terms of species extinction.
Out of 25
global hotspots, the Philippines ranks third on threatened birds,
and eighth on endangered mammals.
On Monday 30
senior wildlife customs and police officers from countries in the
Southeast Asian Nations will meet in Lapu-Lapu City to address the
mounting problem in trafficking and trading of endangered species
worldwide.
Environment
and Natural Resources Secretary Angelo Reyes said he hopes China
could send a delegate to the conference. “Each country is vital to
Asean’s concerted effort in pulling the plug on the illegal
wildlife trade in Asia,” Reyes said.
Southeast Asia
is the world’s major market for tiger bone, leopard cat, rhino
horn, ivory, sea horse and other wildlife species, with an estimated
value of $500 million, the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources disclosed.
The National
Public Radio expedition, a US-based media company, puts the revenues
from the illegal wildlife trade in the region at between $8 billion
and $10 billion a year.
Prof. Jose
Ingles, coordinator for Marine Ecoregion and an expert in the local
marine fauna, said the illicit trade thrives on the big demand in
China for exotic medicines and delicacies, while the Americans and
Europeans buy them for their collections and as pets.
Ingles said
that in just two days the Marine Ecoregion collected more than
P500,000 to have the mamengs released in March. “Everyone seemed
to be very willing to help, and it is so overwhelming that many of
us have united for these endangered mammals,” he said.
Ingles said
that while the Philippines signed the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife and Flora (CITES), it still
lacks implementing laws. “We rely on [CITES] but we do not have
our own law to support it,” he said.
“We have to
realize that each of us has a part to the future of our
environment,” Tan said.
Tan said the
World Wildlife Fund Philippines is closely watching the developments
in the poaching case in Tubbataha.
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