Samar Island Nature Park

Samar is one of the few places in the country where the people themselves-many of them highly dependent on the forests for a living-have abandoned their old way of life and moved toward conservation for the sake of the species that also make the island's forests their home.

This sacrifice laid the foundation for the establishment of the 333,000-hectare Samar Island Nature Park (SINP), which comprises a third of the island's 1.34-million-ha area.

The SINP is a component of the $12.8-million Samar Island Biodiversity Project (SIBP) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), United Nations Development Fund, US Agency for International Development, the Philippine government and nongovernment organizations.

"This project, dealing as it does with a very important biogeographical area in a country which is highly stressed environmentally, has very high global environmental benefits," GEF consultant Peter Raven said in his review of the project proposal in 1999.

He recommended the funding of the SIBP to the GEF, an international funding agency that supports only projects with global significance to biodiversity conservation.

"This is, in my mind, an almost perfect GEF project and, in that sense, is highly innovative ... I find this one of the best in terms of its plans for sustainability," he said in his scientific and technical review.

Samar is listed by the World Wildlife Fund as one of the world's 200 eco-regions for its rich biodiversity. It is also one of 18 plant diversity centers, hosting 12 of the world's threatened tree species.

Found in its contiguous lowland forests are 2,400 species of flowering plants, 406 of which are endemic or found only in the region; 39 species of mammals, most of which are forest dependent; 25 reptile species, and 12 amphibian species.

Samar has also been named as one of the nine endemic bird areas in the Philippines.

The Philippine eagle was first discovered in the forests of Paranas, Samar in 1896. Experts have said that the island, which has some 360,000 ha of unfragmented lowland forests, could have the highest population of the endangered Philippine eagle in the country.

The Philippine eagle, known to be a very territorial species, needs an area of 3,000 ha to fly.
Samar is also home to the threatened Philippine Hawk Eagle and the Philippine Cockatoo, along with 194 other bird species, of which 50 are found only in the Philippines. The Acerodon jubatus, the largest bat in the world, rests in Samar's forests as well.