A resident of Barangay Bucana is urging the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) to strictly implement Republic Act (RA) 9003 and apprehend residents/individuals caught cutting trees without permits.

Cora Refulle, who is also president of Bucana Coastal Environment Fisherfolk Association, told Mirror she has been strongly pushing for the implementation of RA 9003. She said she has also asked assistance through a resolution from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). RA 9003 is an act providing for an ecological solid waste management program.

“Sige lang man sila ug promise nga adtuan nila sa among barangay pero wala man gihapon nahitabo (They always promised to visit our barangay but nothing happened),” Refulle said.

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DAVAO CITY – The Panigan-Tamugan watershed, while not really well-known, has recently been in the limelight due to the attention given to its surface waters.

As a sub-watershed area belonging to the main Davao River Basin, the watershed area is located in the Baguio District and adjacent to the Talomo-Lipadas Watershed, which is currently the source of Davao’s drinking water.

In the late 1990s, faced with the problem of dwindling ground water in the aquifers of Talomo-Lipadas, the Davao City Water District (DCWD) sought other viable sources of drinking water in the region to allow the aquifers to recharge.

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DAVAO CITY – In the olden days, Bagobos living in Davao’s watersheds look to the limokun, the white-eared brown Philippine dove, for omens. In indigenous folklore, the limokun is believed to be a spirit messenger, a harbinger of doom or fortune. For Filipino ornithologists, however, the limokun occupies a more mundane status, albeit a very important one, since the dove is a Philippine endemic, which means that it can be found only here in Philippine watersheds.

However, like most endemic species, the limokun’s survival is at stake since its habitat, which is found in lowland dipterocarp forests along the watershed, is fast vanishing due to various threats. In 2012, watershed advocacy group Interface Development Interventions, Inc. (IDIS) commissioned wildlife biologists from the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) to conduct a biodiversity assessment on two of Davao’s important watersheds, the Talomo-Lipadas (TL) and Panigan-Tamugan (PT) watersheds, which are the current and future sources of the city’s drinking water.

“The watersheds, essentially, are a center for endemism.”, said PEF Conservation Director Jayson Ibanez who said that his team was able to document 171 vertebrate species, mostly endemic, which are living in the dipterocarp forests found in the lowland areas. 28 of these species are categorized as threatened and near threatened, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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