The race to document Indigenous knowledge to protect Philippines’ birds

On Mindoro Island in the Philippines, conservationists and the Indigenous Iraya Mangyan community are racing to document generations of ecological knowledge before it vanishes with the community's aging elders. The effort, led by the Center for Conservation Innovations Philippines under the Mindoro Forest and Biodiversity Programme, covers roughly 40,000 hectares of ancestral domain overlapping the UNESCO-designated Puerto Galera Biosphere Reserve.

Central to the project are three endemic birds the Iraya consider culturally significant: the Mindoro racket-tail, the Mindoro boobook, and the Mindoro scops owl, all classified as vulnerable or near threatened by the IUCN. Community members describe these birds as spiritual messengers and, in one recounted case, as informal storm forecasters that once warned a family to prepare ahead of a typhoon.

Organizers say the recorded knowledge will feed into the Iraya's Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development and Protection Plan, pairing traditional observation with formal conservation science. Deforestation and infrastructure development on the island are cited as the pressures driving the urgency behind the documentation work.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.