About 45 percent of dwellers inside the Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park (MIBNP) are destitute, and earn less than $20 a month or less than P1,000 a month, an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said.
Neil Anthony Del Mundo, the Coordinator of the Tamaraw Conservation Program and concurrent Assistant Protected Area Superintendent of the MIBNP said a socio-economic study conducted by the DENR revealed that the mostly-Mangyan communities are subsistence farmers and earn income by selling handicraft products, firewood or charcoal.
The study, he revealed, was part of the overall effort they conducted to enhance the protection of the last remaining Tamaraw population at MIBNP.
“That is why the challenge in protecting the Tamaraw and the Protected Area is huge,” he told the BusinessMirror at the sideline of the ongoing Europe Asia and the Pacific (EAPAC) Regional Dialogue organized by the United Nations Development Program-Biodiversity Finance Initiative (UNDP-BIOFIN) held at the Conrad Manila Hotel in Pasay City.
Speaking mostly in Filipino, he asked: “How can you stop them from hunting or cutting trees if they have no means of livelihood other than the forest?”
The DENR’s Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), as well as the MIBNP, is working with the UNDP-BIOFIN to find a financial solution to the problem besetting the conservation effort of the government in the Protected Area, the only remaining lush pocket of greens where around 600 tamaraw, a critically endangered species that is indigenous to the island of Mindoro, are concentrated.
According to Del Mundo, the TCP receives an annual budget of P4.5 million, of which P3.5 million goes to the salary of the Tamaraw Rangers and other staff.
“The remaining P1 million goes to operational expense,” said Del Mundo.
During the pandemic, he recalled that the tamaraw rangers have nearly lost their jobs, leaving the Tamaraw and their habitat, completely unprotected from hunters.
He said through their participation in the regional dialogue, they hope to find a sustainable financing solution that would allow the TCP to hire more Tamaraw Rangers, and give them a fair wage or salary.
A tamaraw ranger starts with a P8,500 a month pay, it was learned.
Currently, there are only 24 tamaraw rangers protecting Mindoro’s iconic land mammal. The most senior tamaraw ranger receives P15,000 monthly in salary but has been in the employ of the TCP for 34 years.
“We hope to have the funding to hire more, and hopefully, increase the salary they receive.” He added that hiring tamaraw rangers as regular employees would also be very helpful, as it will ensure job security and continuity of the ongoing protection and conservation effort at MIBNP.