Bringing Citizen Science Conservation Projects to Life in the Philippines: In Conversation with Nat Geo Explorer, KM Reyes
KM Reyes is a National Geographic Explorer and co-founder of Centre for Sustainability Philippines. This is a women-led youth environmental non-profit, whose mission is to conserve the Philippines’ last remaining three percent pristine rainforest through legal establishment of nationaL parks.
KM Reyes. Photographed by Mark Thiessen.
So KM, could you tell us a bit about you, and where your interest in the natural world first started?
My background is in community organising and political sciences. It was actually when I did an environment security course and worked with communities that were extremely vulnerable to environmental disasters, that I realised that I needed to look at things more holistically -specifically, look at things through an environmental lens. So yeah, that’s how I slowly shifted from doing policy work in terms of humans rights, to doing more intersectional work with human rights and environmental concerns.
One of your flagship conservation projects is the effort to conserve Cleopatra's Needle critical habitat. Could you tell us what this project is all about?
The Cleopatra’s Needle project was started in 2014, and essentially we set out to establish a protected area. This area comes together in a mountain, called Cleopatra’s Needle. This is the third highest peak in Palawan, and the highest peak of Puerto Princesa. It’s a really important area as it’s home to thirty one IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) globally threatened species, including the number one most poached animal in the world, the pangolin. It’s also home to sixty one Palawan endemic species, flora and fauna only found here on the island of Palawan. And most importantly, it’s the ancestral home of the disappearing Batak Tribe. Only 200 members of this tribe remain. It’s thanks to the Batak that we still have something left there to protect.
The steps to get an area legally protected are: community organising, scientific research, and lobbying for political protection. In 2017, we managed to get the area legally protected, but there is still a lot of work to be done there.
Measuring specimens in Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat. Credit: Katharina D’avis.
You’re a National Geographic explorer, which is a label that comes with a lot of weight. How did you start working with them?
So as a National Geographic explorer, I basically applied to a grant from the National Geographic Society, and as a result of winning that grant, I was able to do our first big citizen science project with local people. They’ve since funded two large citizen science projects, and two more smaller projects.
National Geographic is really special as it’s not just the society, it’s this huge media platform that they have to really broadcast your work. So being a National Geographic explorer is completely life changing in terms of having to learn all the extra media skills that come together with being an explorer; it’s not just about doing the conservation work or doing the change-making work on the ground, it’s about also being a good science communicator and an advocate for your work on a wider, if not international level.
So there’s lots of skills that National Geographic has given me in terms of online and face-to-face training, as well as opportunities to travel around as an explorer. In terms of taking care of the explorers, what’s been really special as well is they’ve taken all the issues with Asian hate, Black Lives Matter, and just the kind of wider justice discussions that we’re having now on an international level, they’ve taken it very seriously and that’s really exciting because of us, as explorers, [we] get an opportunity to weigh in with what we do and don’t like about the society and what needs to change. So it’s great to see that it really is an interactive organisation.
Now the Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an environmental activist and a conservationist. Could you explain why that is?
Basically, what it boils down to, to put it really bluntly, is that on paper we’re one of the oldest democracies, if not the oldest, in Asia because of our long legacy of Spanish colonisation for over 300 years and American colonisation for 50 years. But it’s not really a democracy. We’re very much a country ruled by oligarchies, and political family dynasties. So impunity, corruption, and nepotism is extremely common, and this idea of voting for the best candidate, or even this idea of voting the worst candidate out, doesn’t apply here. You vote for whoever you have a closer familial affiliation to, normally.
So we’ll move on to some positive news now, you are working to establish another National Park in southern Palawan, called Kensad. Could you talk about why this area is important?
It’s a lot like our project at Cleopatra’s Needle. Again, we’re applying our three pillars when approaching this, so the first is land conservation. First, we want to protect the area. It’s about 8,000 hectares, so that’s roughly 8,000 rugby pitches. The area is home to lots of endangered species, but it’s extremely understudied. We do know that we have 24 out of our 26 endemic bird species; we have the pangolin, we have otters, and bear cats. The area is also home to the Indigenous Tagbanua community. And the reason why the area is so special is it has this spectacular waterfall up the very top, at about 1,300 meters above sea level, and it’s just this incredible watershed that travels all the way down to the coast. So you’re looking at just incredible landscape from ridge to reef of some of our last wild places on the planet.
I wanted to ask you about your upcoming Ranger raffle, but by the time this interview comes out, the raffle will have sadly been and gone. Could you talk about why you did this, imagine it’s in the past, and what the readers of Bloom in Doom can continue to do to support your work, your organisation and the rangers on the ground?
Yeah, well it doesn’t look like we’re going to reach our target anyway, so even when this comes out people are more than welcome to hop on to our website and onto PayPal and send over a few quid for the rangers if they can, we’re going to have to figure out now what our next steps are in terms of bridging that funding shortfall. Basically, what has happened, we have 24 indigenous rangers working for us, and since 2019 they haven’t received a salary, even though they’re patrolling our country’s biggest critical habitat. Covid-19 obviously slowed down the political process and general funding shortages.
So with the Raffle on Earth Day, we tried to both raise funds and awareness, but also promote the critical importance of supporting indigenous communities. Because the data shows that in areas where indigenous peoples have some kind of claim or tenure, deforestation is halved. It’s not a small percentage. The budget is also much smaller for indigenous peoples to conserve wild spaces, it costs less for them to protect their own land than it does to pay a big environmental organisation like WWF, like Greenpeace.
Indigenous communities make up five percent of the global population, but protect 80 percent of global biodiversity. This isn’t just some kind of rallying cry, there’s hard financial data to prove they (indigenous people) are much better in terms of money, in terms of effectiveness. And then obviously we want to raise money for our rangers who aren’t being supported, even though the threats they face are really serious, like deforestation, land-grabbing, mining and poaching.
KM Reyes engaging with the communities. Credit: Centre for Sustainability, Philippines.
You can go to www.centreforsustainabilityph.org/donate to support their rangers. When making your donation, put the reference ”Ranger raffle” and your donation will go directly to helping the indigenous rangers who work with Centre for Sustainability Philippines.
You can also head to wherever you listen to podcasts to listen to my full interview episode with KM Reyes, which made up Episode 17 of my podcast, Coffee with Conservationists!
George Steedman Jones
George is a first year Marine and Natural History Student at Falmouth University, who tells stories of nature and conservation through a variety of mediums. While conservation photography is his main passion, he has loved writing from a young age and pursued nature writing as a form of science communication alongside his photography over the last year. An environmentalist and conservation volunteer, he has been passionate about the natural world, wildlife and environmental issues throughout his life, fuelled by a childhood spent in nature.
You can find him on Instagram: @george_brynmor.