In the rapidly shrinking lowland forests of Palawan Island, the Philippine porcupine (Hystrix pumila) can be found under tree buttresses, foraging for fallen root crops and fruits. Endemic to Palawan and…
PALAWAN, Philippines — As darkness creeps in, the coastal waters surrounding the off-grid island of Calibangbangan become aglow with blinding lights. For the fishermen who’ve lived in this sleepy community…
PALAWAN, Philippines — What do you do if you encounter a saltwater crocodile on your way home? For Roozie Quea Idlana, a resident of the town of Balabac in the Philippines,…
The Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands, supporting an extraordinary number of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. Eighty-six new endemic bird species have been…
MANILA — In the town of Pilar in the central Philippines, a community of 11,308 residents looks after one of the most successful marine protected areas in the country: the…
MANILA — The Philippines’ most traded turtle species, and among the world’s rarest, received a bit of a population boost as researchers introduced two juveniles in the wilds of the…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Maggots are considered gross since they thrive best in stinky, decaying organic matter such as animal waste and plants. The mere sight of them in a household…
Filip Wojciechowski moved to the island of Bohol in the Philippines in 2014 to study one of the country’s most elusive nocturnal primates, the Philippine tarsier. But he hadn’t reckoned…
Pala’wan indigenous community leader Simpio Mata trudges through the natural forest of Mount Domadoway, in the southern part of the Philippines’ Palawan province, at least twice a month. He does…
A project by the EcoVision Lab at ETH Zurich expects to have every quarter of the tropics mapped and classified by carbon stock by the end of the year, providing…
MANILA — When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020 in Southeast Asia, its governments took rapid containment actions: lockdowns, travel restrictions and trade suspensions, alerting the public about the virus. The…
A solitary whale frequently spotted in the Bohol Sea in the southern Philippines has long had a nickname: Bughaw, or "blue." Now, thanks to recently published research, the whale also…
MANILA — As the climate crisis bites, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has unveiled its ambitious plan to scrap funding for coal mining and power plants, and ban support for…
PALAWAN, Philippines — Nicole Tayag, 30, learned to snorkel at 5 when her father took her to the teeming waters of Coron to scout for potential tourist destinations back in…
Filipino fishers call it the “secret island” — a group of three sandbars that emerge when the tide’s low enough, located a mile or so away from Pag-asa Island, known…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Rising 2,064 meters, or nearly 6,800 feet, above sea level, Mount Busa is the tallest peak in the Philippines’ Sarangani province and home to one of the…
MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte has issued an order to lift a nine-year moratorium on granting new mining permits in the Philippines. The order is expected to ease the entry…
AKLAN, Philippines — Although it lies less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the globally famous resort island of Boracay, the province of Antique in the central Philippines remains primarily…
MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines — The southern Philippines is home to the world's rarest and most endangered crocodile species: the freshwater Philippine crocodile (Crocodylus mindorensis). After decades of sliding toward extinction,…
PALAWAN, Philippines — In a span of six months, Philippine environmental authorities have seized 150 tons of giant clam shells from a string of operations across the island province of…
MANILA — The Philippines is protesting the presence of more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels anchored at Whitsun Reef, a shallow coral region located 175 nautical miles (324 kilometers) west…
MANILA — Palawan is an outlier in the Philippine archipelago, its topography and habitat closer to that of Borneo than the rest of the country’s major islands. This so-called last…
MANILA — For the Philippines, the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the only disaster to hit the country in 2020. The year started out with a volcanic eruption and closed with two…
In 1993, a lone stream frog was discovered once but never found again in the wild. Herpetologists thought the frog species went extinct before it could be studied. Then, last…
KALINGA, Philippines — On Nov. 12, 2020, Typhoon Vamco cut across the northern Philippines, flooding more than 60 cities and towns in the Cagayan Valley. Millions of dollars’ worth of…
MANILA — The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 spewed enough volcanic ash into the atmosphere to cool the world. In the immediate vicinity of the volcano,…
ALBAY, Philippines — When Typhoon Goni made landfall in the Philippines on Nov. 1, 2020, experts predicted disaster. A day earlier, the national volcanology institute, PHIVOLCS, had warned that heavy…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Four years ago, villagers in the town of Labason in the southern Philippines’ Zamboanga Peninsula woke up to a spectacle they never thought could happen in these…
AKLAN, Philippines — At dawn on Dec. 30, 2020, police officers raided Indigenous villages within a military reservation camp in the central Philippines in search of alleged members of the…
MANILA — Knowledge of the Philippine pangolin, the only pangolin species in the country, is scant. Sightings of the animal are rarer still. But unlike other pangolin species around the…
