Mt. Hilong-hilong Important Bird Area (IBA), located in the northeastern portion of the mainland Mindanao in the Philippines, is the home of the globally threatened Philippine Eagle (Haring Ibon) and indigenous peoples (IP) tribes belonging to the Mamanwas and Manobos.

This IBA is one of the few IBAs containing the last remaining tracks of lowland tropical rainforests in the Caraga Region in northeastern Mindanao.

Within the forest interiors of the IBA live a small population of the two tribes in Sitio Ibuan of Barangay Mampi in the municipality of Lanuza, Surigao del Sur. In a few cases, there have been inter-marriages between the two tribes and with lowlanders.

Farming, collection and gathering of timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are the main sources of income by the community. Kaingin (slash and burn), considered as the cheapest way of farming, is the most common practice in developing and managing their upland farms. Farms are usually planted with cash crops such as traditional rice varieties, sweet potato, cassava and a wide array of vegetables for household consumption.

The local IP community relies mainly on subsistence farming. They harvest timber and hunt wild boar, monkey, hornbills, fruit doves and pigeons during tribal rituals and for home consumption too. As decades pass, the local community observed that their unsustainable forest management practices including indiscriminate hunting and timber poaching within their ancestral domain caused the dwindling population of wildlife.

In 2009, together with Haribon Foundation, the IP tribe identified and allocated 424 hectares within the Mt. Hilong-hilong IBA as a wildlife sanctuary. A short ritual ushered for its declaration. Using their traditional governance system, the declaration strictly prohibits hunting, collection and gathering of any form of wildlife within the sanctuary to enable various species of flora and fauna to thrive and multiply. However, as part of their cultural beliefs and practices, wildlife hunting will be allowed within their ancestral domain as long as it is outside the wildlife sanctuary for a certain period of the year.

With Haribon’s assistance, the local IP community prepared a conservation plan to restore the degraded forest areas within the wildlife sanctuary and the kaingin farms of selected forest-dependent families (FDFs) within the village using Abaca-based Agroforestry Farming Systems (Abaca-AFS). Abaca production was chosen as the priority forest-friendly livelihood by the local IP village through a livelihood prioritization workshop.

A total of 35 participating FDFs received four seedlings each of Durian, Lanzones, Rambutan, Mangosteen, and Sunkist, all fruit-bearing seedlings, which were planted in their respective farms within the IBA.

On the other hand, another set of 53 participating FDFs received and planted a total of 277 abaca-planting materials, in coordination and partnership with Ebuan Padayon sa Kalambuan (EPASAKA), an Indigenous Peoples Organization (IPO). The IPO shouldered the cost of labor in land preparation and planting as their community counterpart. The community sourced their abaca planting materials within their area to ensure that these were free from any possible pests and diseases.

The local IP village inherited the traditional cultivation of abaca from their ancestors. However, processing of their abaca into high-grade quality fiber remains to be a perennial problem because they strip their abaca manually which is not at par with a high-quality fiber produced using a mechanized abaca stripper. Haribon offered a solution by providing them with a portable abaca-stripping machine in exchange for the IP commitment to implement sustainable forest management practices.

A livelihood conservation agreement (LCA) between Haribon and the POs was put in place. One of the important conditions of the LCA is that participating FDFs can no longer expand or open new forest areas for kaingin but will instead maintain and diversify their existing farms through rainforestation farming and agroforestry to improve their living conditions and their biodiversity.

(This project was supported by the European Union, AECID and Birdlife International)