Newly-declared critical habitat Cleopatra’s Needle needs P1.5-M

The management board of Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat (CNCH) proposed a P1.5-million budget this 2019 to help achieve its desired environmental conservation results and to strengthen the protection and conservation of Puerto Princesa City’s highest peak and rich biodiversity site.

Senior Environmental Management Specialist Zorina Arellano, head of the Protected Area Management Services of the City Environment and Natural Resources Office, said on Thursday that the needed fund was proposed for inclusion in the 2019 budget of the City Government and is expected to be included in its supplemental budget. “Pino-propose siya na maisama sa supplemental budget ng City ENRO ngayong 2019,” she said.

Arellano further said that the CNCH is managed by a management board chaired by the City Mayor of Puerto Princesa and the Community Environment and Natural Resources Officer (CENRO) of DENR-CENRO, Puerto Princesa. It was also proposed during its recent meeting that the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) shall also be the co-chair of the management board.

Other members of the council include government agencies and offices, non-government organizations and people’s organizations in the area.

A new executive order from the City Mayor reconstituting the management board and the TWG will be issued by mid-2019 preferably after elections, explained Arellano.

She said that there were initial discussions among the members of the CNCH TWG on the need for the group to visit other places with existing critical habitat area as part of the benchmarking. In this way, they will gain insights and good practices.

The NGO Center for Sustainability, who is also a member of the CNCH technical working group, suggested to visit the Municipality of Cabusao in Camarines Sur, a town with an established critical habitat area.

Once fully operational, The CNCH will be headed by Critical Habitat area superintendent/ supervisor and it shall have an administration and finance division and an operations division. Part of its operations division includes information and education campaign (IEC), enforcement and community development.

The 38,693-hectare CNCH is part of the Cleopatra’s Needle mountain, with an altitude of 1,593 meters above sea level. It was declared by the PCSD as a critical habitat. It covers the barangays of San Rafael, Tanabag, Langogan, Binduyan, Concepcion, New Pangangan and Tagabinet.

Republic Act 9147, also known as the Wildlife Resource Conservation and Protection Act, defines a critical habitat as “a portion of the land outside a protected area that is characterized by a presence of threatened species, considering its endemicity and richness in the area as well as the presence of threats to its survival.”

The declaration as critical habitat aims to spare CNCH from illegal occupation, logging, forest conversion to agriculture and settlements, and mineral exploration and extraction, among other destructive human activities that cause habitat loss.