Keith Anthony Fabro

Endemic to the islands of Palawan province, Philippine porcupines are threatened by habitat loss and, increasingly, by black-market demand for bezoars: stony aggregations of...

The Philippines introduced a new fisheries management framework to curb illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in 2019.Under the fisheries management area (FMA) mechanism, the...

Since November 2020, Indigenous people have observed trees that have been illegally felled within a mining concession in southern Palawan, an island in the...

The Philippine government has suspended work on a bridge that would connect the islands of Coron and Culion in the coral-rich region of Palawan.Activists,...

Philippine authorities seized 324 pieces of giant clam shells weighing a combined 80 tons in the province of Palawan on March 3.The seizure brings...

Forest loss in the Victoria-Anepahan Mountain Range (VAMR), which spans 165,000 hectares (408,000 acres), is driven primarily by illegal logging and clearing for farmland, according to recent satellite data from Global Forest Watch (GFW). This trend has continued despite the country’s pandemic lockdown.

The situation has raised concerns among plant taxonomists who recently described a new Philippine-endemic species of begonia, a perennial herb with light pink flowers and captivating foliage, popular in the ornamental plant trade.

Mahusay is one of the more than 200 traders in the Philippine island province of Palawan engaged in mariculture, a type of aquaculture where wild-caught fish are grown in enclosed pens. “I buy wild-caught suno juveniles from hook-and-line fishers and then grow the fish in a cage until such time they reach the marketable plate size,” he tells Mongabay.

It wasn’t until August last year that Badon had an epiphany. While browsing the same book and after a closer look at the butterfly’s wings, he noticed that unlike the true A. p. montana, this butterfly’s forewing underside cell end spot was funnel-shaped.

The group was arrested without a warrant and was detained until 4 p.m. the same day. Both the city police and Puerto Princesa’s CENRO office declined to comment on the incident when Mongabay reached out.

The plebiscite initially set for May 11, would have given nearly half a million voters in Palawan the choice of whether or not to accept Republic Act 11259, which would split the 1.5-million-hectare (3.7-million-acre) province — the biggest in the country — into three smaller ones: Palawan del Norte, Palawan Oriental, and Palawan del Sur.

A world-famous tourist destination in the Philippines, Palawan receives more than a million tourists annually; Siete Pecados’ vibrant coral reefs, part of the 36% of the country’s total coral cover, welcomed 51,000 visitors in 2019 alone.