GALAPAGOS? THE PHILIPPINES IS 10 TIMES MORE EXCITING!
Because his all-white hair and Santa beard hint at the academic within, it’s hard to guess just by looking at him that Lawrence Heaney regularly treks the mountains and forests of the Philippines for weeks on end, looking for undiscovered wildlife – and that he has done so every year for 37 years now.
Dr Heaney is an American with a doctorate in Systematics and Ecology, and Head of the Division of Mammals in the Field Museum in Chicago. When he says he is an evolutionary biologist, he is not describing what he does. Instead, to a great extent, he is defining what he is, the way some people are defined by the passions of their lives. His passion, a great part of his being, is natural history, “how these crazy animals make a living, what they do when they’re out there in the woods…”
Every time Dr Heaney comes to the Philippines for a five-week-or-so visit, he heads for densely forested woods and mountains hoping to discover new species of wildlife. He says, as if he is in awe of the fact, that the biological diversity in this country “is the Galapagos Islands multiplied 10-fold”.
“You watch Discovery Channel and National Geographic where people go to the Galapagos, Madagascar or East Africa. The Philippines is a better place to study biological diversity than any of those countries. It is mind boggling,” he says.
Exactly how many plant and animal species there are in the Philippines is largely unknown, but there are an estimated 13,500 plant species, 8,000 of which are flowering, 3,200 of them endemic. There are also 80 amphibians, 240 reptiles, 556 birds and 174 animals. New ones are still being discovered, with most of them found nowhere else in the world. The diversity is largely attributed to the country’s geological history of isolation that allowed animals to evolve in ways quite different from their ancestors.
Philippine wildlife is so diverse, it is considered at the top of the list of ‘megadiversity’ countries. Dr Heaney and his colleagues have discovered 20 new mammal species in the past 10 years, finding four to five species a year. The only place in the world where more mammals are being discovered is Madagascar, which has a bigger land area than the Philippines. Stated differently, the Philippines is more diverse in wildlife than the Amazon rainforests!
Take for example one of Dr Heaney’s favorite animals – the little known Isarog
shrew-rat, a small critter with an elongated snout and tiny teeth up the front end of his skull, small molars and narrow hind feet under hefty haunches. It’s a shrew and a rat in one, the kind of creature Dr Heaney finds ‘cute’. It’s also the largest ‘rat’ in the world. In northern Luzon they have white, silvery fur; in the south, it’s mahogany. Dr Heaney’s team found the Isarog shrew-rat in Mount Isarog in Southern Luzon in 1988. It was the first of its kind to be seen – alive, that is.
In 1961, a team of field workers from Silliman University, led by Filipino Professor Dioscoro Rabor, conducted zoological studies of Mount Isarog in Camarines Sur. Dr Rabor promised to send a friend in the Field Museum in Chicago some birds and rodents. The animals were cleaned, catalogued, placed in a cabinet and then forgotten because Dr Rabor’s friend Sandy Sanborn was ill – and eventually died.
Twenty years later, two other biologists saw the specimens and realized that one of them was an animal completely unknown to science. They named it Rhynchomys isarogensis, or “the snout-mouse from Isarog”. No one knew what accounted for its long snout and small teeth, but subsequently seeing it alive, taking an earth worm in one paw, shucking the dirt off with the other and sucking it like a long piece of spaghetti, all made sense to Dr Heaney. He concluded that the Isarog shrew-rat was an animal that had evolved in the only way an earthworm-eating animal would have. However, if it hadn’t been seen to eat earthworms, as no one had seen it alive until that time, its physiological make-up would have remained a scientific mystery.
It is difficult to comprehend how the Isarog shrew-rat, its earthworms and the forests on the mountain are all integral to the survival of Filipinos. Suffice it to say that during the typhoon season, the Mount Isarog habitat collects up to a meter of rainfall, and slowly releases the water into the groundwater system to prevent floods. It supplies the clean water much needed by the populated lowlands.
It seems too simplistic to be true, but cut down the trees and the moss underneath it dies, no roots will hold back the water, the earthworms disappear and the Isarog shrew-rat dies. There follow floods, famine, and not much of a future for the surrounding communities. But despite being a national park, the illegal logging on Mount Isarog continues to provide local hardware stores with beautiful – irreplaceable – hardwood, threatening the Isarog shrew-rat’s existence.
In the Field Museum’s website, Dr Heaney says his current research “focuses on the ecology and evolution of mammals on the islands of Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines, as a natural laboratory where the influence of island area, habitat diversity, degree of isolation, and geological histories may be investigated”.
To pursue precisely that, two days after getting off a plane from Chicago, he is off to Mount Pulag, one of the largest national parks in the country. Tingling with excitement, he seems like the child he has said he is – in the woods all day, happy to come home with pockets full of bugs and frogs.
“There’s never been a survey of the mammals done there,” he says, his eyes sparkling at the thought of the five-week jungle trek, broken into 10-day periods.
“Part of the attraction is that we don’t know for sure what we’ll see,” he says. “The Cordillera has the most diverse fauna of small mammals, little shrews, mice and weird little critters in the Philippines. We know that Mount Pulag is the highest peak in the area, has the largest amount of high elevation habitat, and a lot of the animals we’re interested in live in the mossy forests.
The ground is completely covered with moss, orchids and all sorts of exotic other flowering plants growing there. I love it.”
He picks up a book, one of the two authors of which is himself. He finds a picture of a densely-forested area with tree branches covered in inches of moss. The twisted branches, he explains, are each just about as thick as a thumb, but the moss covering them is so dense that each branch appears too thick to be encircled by a hand. The ground cover is so dense that some of the roots of the trees don’t even reach bedrock.
When you walk on the plant matter, the ground bounces and the trees bend towards you, giving the illusion of walking on a trampaulin.
Not counting the amazing forest, it’s obvious Dr Heaney can’t contain the rush he feels at the discoveries that await in Mount Pulag: a giant bat, perhaps, that weighs two and half kilos; a 15-gram vegetarian mouse; a little animal that hops around on its hind legs like a mini kangaroo; and earthworms of all kinds.
“You can have up to 25 different species of earthworms,” he says, clearly amazed that the Philippines can be a universe unto itself, with plants and animals evolving in isolation from the rest of the world. And almost as remarkable as his discoveries is his unshakable excitement over the wealth of Philippine wildlife, one that has lasted almost four decades. This one man’s passion for the Philippines points out a source of pride for a people who sometimes find little to be proud of in their own country.
“If Filipinos had a better idea of what they have, I think they might be more interested in protecting it,” he says, because knowing is a mode of conservation in itself. He believes that knowledge of the biological diversity in their country would promote for Filipinos an appreciation of nature, and the will to go out and enjoy nature.
“Encouraging other people to enjoy, either directly by hiking and seeing these places, or indirectly by reading about them, can have a substantial impact on the conservation effort,” says Dr Heaney. For shrews, mice, and earthworms – all important facets of our survival – it can spell all the difference.
THE WAY TO CONSERVATION
What can each of us do to ensure that the biodiversity of our country’s wildlife doesn’t disappear? Dr Heaney suggests:
1 KNOW ABOUT THE WILDLIFE
“Every time we discover a new species, even if it’s just a mouse, people get really excited. The idea that we got something from their place that’s unique catches their imagination. I think one of the biggest problems in the Philippines is that people have not had access to information. Knowing is essential so that people appreciate what’s there and wish to protect it.”
2 ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
“If you’re a businessman, or you’re building something, the kinds of decisions you make after you’ve asked your suppliers the right questions are important. For example, a question like ‘Where’s the wood coming from?’ is simple, with profound implications.”
3 HAVE AN OPEN MIND
“Not all rats are destructive. The native rats, for example, do virtually no damage. They’re clean. They smell good. They’re cute and they’re very different from the one’s not endemic to the Philippines that live in houses.”
KEEP THEM IN THE WILD
“The most successful way of protecting endangered species is to keep them in their natural habitat, however that is a choice that depends on circumstance. For example, if there are just three of the species left they’re not going to survive in the wild.”
5 ENVIRONMENTAL STABILITY NEEDS ECONOMIC STABILITY
“Conservation is sometimes misunderstood. People must realize that economic development and stability requires environmental stability. It’s not an either/or situation… Animals don’t become extinct on their own. It’s up to us to protect them.”
WHERE TO GO FOR WILDLIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES
According to Dr Heaney almost any place in the Philippines can be a place to go to see and enjoy natural habitats. Here are five of his recommendations
1 MOUNT DATA, BETWEEN BANAUE AND BAGUIO
“Though not much of the mossy forest is left on Mount Data, Mount Data Lodge is a nice place to stay. From the lodge, anybody – even those not into mountain climbing – can hike up to the mossy forests in about half-an-hour.”
2 SIBUYAN ISLAND IN ROMBLON
“Look out for the Sibuyan Pygmy Fruit Bat, an animal endemic to Sibuyan and the Philippine Tube-Nosed Fruit Bat (Nyctimene rabori), one of the few striped bats in the world, with distinguished yellow spots on its ears. Or spend time spotting any of the 131 species of birds.”
3 CEBU
“Though the province has been largely deforested, there are still some forests left with very cool animals. There are several species of birds that live only in Cebu island. Some things are a bit harder to see, but there are bats on the island and sometimes I’m astounded they’re still living there.”
4 NEGROS
“This is gorgeous, stunning.” There are several mountains in Negros: Kanlaon Volcano, Mount Silay, Mount Mandalagan and Cuernos de Negros. “All very accessible and spectacular.” Should you be at Cuernos, keep an eye out for the Negros cave frog (Platymantis spelaeus), the common forest frog (Platymantis dorsalis) and the burrowing skink (Brachymeles boulengeri taylori).
5 MOUNT BANAHAW
“This is a very pretty place.” There are three peaks here: Mount Banahaw itself, thought of by some as sacred; San Cristobal and Mount Banahaw de Lucban. Frequented by mountain climbers, its natural beauty is looked after by the Protected Areas and Management Board of the Mount Banahaw National Park. It is home to short-tailed and long-tailed forest mice, and fruit-eating rats.
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