Dwarf buffalo fights for survival in RP

Agence France-Presse
Last updated 08:26pm (Mla time) 05/16/2007

MOUNT MAGAWANG, Philippines -- A stout black tamaraw bull warily leads a grey
cow and two calves onto a meadow, sniffing the late afternoon air to check for the
presence of hunters.

Emerging to graze only at dawn and dusk, the dwarf water buffalo, the largest
indigenous mammal in the Philippines, is living on borrowed time.

First documented in 1888, the tamaraw stands about three feet (one meter) high at
the shoulder and weighs 300 kilograms (660 pounds).

It lives for about 25 years and has a ferocious streak -- it has been known to attack
people with its V-shaped horns.

By the 1960s only about 300 had been counted in the wild making it rarer than the
black rhinoceros of Africa, China's panda and the tiger.

Tamaraw exist mostly within a 16,000-hectare (39,520-acre) section of a 97,000-

hectare (240,000-acre) national park around Mount Iglit on the central island of
Mindoro.

"Since there are less than 500 of them, by definition they are still on the critically
endangered list," said Rodel Boyles, head of the government's Tamaraw
Conservation Program.

The World Conservation Union cites habitat loss from cattle ranching and farming,
hunting and diseases as major threats to the animal's survival. A century ago about
10,000 were thought to be roaming the entire island.

The conservation program is run on a shoestring annual budget of P3.69 million,

barely even enough to fund and outfit Boyles' staff of 30, including a handful of anti-
poacher patrols.

The park also shelters deer, wild hogs and other rare birds endemic to Mindoro,
including the imperial pigeon, scops owl, black-hooded coucal, scarlet-collared
flowerpecker and bleeding-heart pigeon, as well as the rare Jade vine.

As the count began here from a vantage point atop Mount Magawang, two suspected
big game hunters brazenly cut across the pasture below and headed for the gap at
Iyam River, disturbing a tamaraw herd which bolted toward a creek hidden beneath
tall reeds.

Enforcement of the law is lax and Boyles recalls an incident two years ago when
Mindoro police released two poachers and then cooked and ate the meat they had
seized.

The Mangyan, mountain-dwelling people who still wear loin cloths and hunt with
spears are allowed to hunt tamaraw in a designated area outside the park.

Boyles said there were encouraging signs that within the park the tamaraw, a cousin
of the ubiquitous carabao or water buffalo that is the Philippines' main draft animal,
has earned a measure of respite from man, its only known predator.

Tamaraw numbers had risen to 263 in the past year, and Boyles said initial numbers
from this year's count are even more encouraging.

Twenty-three animals were counted in the morning and 34 in the afternoon from
Magawang, one of 18 observation points in the park.

Boyles said this section of the park's carrying capacity appeared to be nearing its limit
and tamaraw sightings had been reported by residents in nearby Rizal town, where
there are government proposals to expand the protected area of the park on land now
occupied by ranchers.

When the dry season sets in March these days mountainsides at the tamaraw park
are set on fire in a controlled burning program to entice the herds to come out of
hiding and browse on the new shoots several weeks later starting on Earth Day on
April 22, when a five-day annual tamaraw count is held.

This year, 25 guests were invited to the tamaraw range, an arduous seven-hour hike
up a mountain trail from the village of Poypoy, a settlement of the indigenous
Mangyan tribe whose menfolk once hunted the animal for meat but who now form part
of the park's security force against poachers.

They included several Western eco-tourists on a tour organized by Britain's Scientific

Exploration Society.

"I would rather do a holiday like this, with a purpose," said Hermione Morrison, a
retired British doctor and volunteer conservationist from Cornwall, who paid 2,500
pounds to join the tamaraw count.

"We're more interested in the whale's decline but not on things like this," she said.

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