Of death and hope for the Tamaraw Rangers

MOUNTS IGLIT-BACO, Occidental Mindoro: Gunshots echoed across the verdant fields of the mountain. Fear and silence followed in its wake. Throughout the nearly seven long months of the pandemic, it was not just the virus that the Tamaraw Rangers feared but the bullets in the sky.

The pandemic has left the environmental defenders of the Philippines in peril as wildlife atrocities surge at an alarming rate. The Tamaraw Rangers have been left to face this crisis without institutional support after unprecedented budget cuts and strict travel restrictions hindered our wildlife rangers’ movement and emergency response to protect and conserve our beloved national icon, the Tamaraw. About two months ago on August 28, another adult Tamaraw was killed and poached in the grassy steppes of the Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park — a 106,655-hectare protected area, where the last few remaining wild populations of the critically endangered Tamaraw roams. It was another tragic loss as strips of bushmeat of the poached Tamaraw were seen being dried under the sun and above the land where it should have roamed free — leaving nothing but droplets of blood on the slivers of grass in the mountains dedicated to their entire existence. With only an estimated 500 individual Tamaraws left in the wild, every single loss is a step closer to its extinction. The Tamaraw Rangers have taken the brunt of the pandemic, while Filipinos take advantage of this crisis as a means to poach and destroy the wildlife habitats where today rangers are pinned to the ground, making ends meet while trying to save an entire species from extinction. Our wildlife rangers have faced the threats of unemployment amid the socioeconomic impacts of this pandemic — only to risk their lives dodging bullets to protect what they love. Yet the sound of firing guns was not the only tragedy in this long and complex ordeal, but the death of the last captive-bred Tamaraw, Kali.