SPECIAL REPORT | Mt. Magdiwata: from 54% forest cover to restored ecosystem
Chris V. Panganiban, Sr. of MindNews / Patricio P. Diaz Fellow
SAN FRANCISCO, Agusan del Sur (MindaNews / 31 August) — What used to be a critically endangered mountain with only 54 percent forest cover almost three decades ago is now teeming with greenery after years of effort to bring back to life the 1,658-hectare Mt. Magdiwata watershed.
Nowadays, residents take pride in Mt. Magdiwata as a restored ecosystem, its forest cover almost reaching 100 percent.
Since 1997, the San Francisco Water District (SFWD) has been at the forefront of a massive reforestation program to rehabilitate the vanishing forest, as it is the only source of potable water for some 6,000 households in this rapidly growing town, which now hosts three shopping malls.
SFWD initiated an intensive campaign to protect Magdiwata against encroachers, banking on Presidential Proclamation 282 signed by President Fidel Ramos in 1993, declaring the area a permanent watershed and forest reserve.
Dying Mountain
The forest had been heavily denuded, with about 900 hectares already turned into open grassland after decades of large-scale logging in the 1960s and 1970s and the unabated tree-cutting activities in the 1980s to supply band saw milling plants proliferating around the town.
The presence of about 200 occupants, mostly dwelling on sloping terrains and on high plateaus where they planted root crops and coconuts, added to the problem of the dying mountain. At one point, environmentalists feared a tragedy similar to the Guinsaugon mudslide in Southern Leyte.
In the distant past, Mt. Magdiwata was considered by the Manobo as sacred ritual grounds.
According to SFWD studies, there were only 695 hectares of natural forest, or 54 percent, left in the Magdiwata watershed in December 1997, with around 1,200 hectares already considered inadequate forest, open area grasslands, and small portions of man-made forests, palm oil, and abaca farms.
Almost thirty years later, the watershed has been totally rehabilitated with about 97 percent forest cover as a result of an intensive reforestation program that regenerated the wide open areas with mixed natural tree species.
The portion referred to as inadequate forest in the 1997 now has different trees already towering 10 meters tall and 10 cubic meters in diameter, while settlers living at the foot of the mountain attest that wildlife, which had been bountiful in the past, has come back for good.
New Study
In July 2024, experts from Caraga State University (CSU) made a formal study of the mountain’s ecosystem and biodiversity, resulting in a comprehensive 220-page collaborative report released by the SFWD.
Entitled “Technical Report: Biodiversity Update (Flora and Fauna) and the Socioeconomic Study of the Mt. Magdiwata Watershed and Forest Reserve (MMWFR) and Indicative Watershed Management Plan,” the report was completed in December 2024 after months of research and study by CSU experts, with assistance from SFWD management and the technical team.
The experts were led by Dr. Romell A. Seronay, RDI Director of the Center for Research in Environmental Management and Eco-Governance (CRÈME) at CSU, and Dr. Nilo Calomot, SFWD consultant who teaches environmental science also at CSU.
Elmer Luzon, SFWD general manager, and his staff provided technical assistance to the experts who encamped at the 1,658-hectare watershed, now endowed with 97 percent forest cover, to learn that the verdant mountain is rich with biodiversity.
“The plan will find a balance in addressing socio-economic concerns and giving due reverence to the environment while recognizing the diverse social and cultural beliefs of San Francisco, Agusan del Sur,” noted Luzon in the foreword of the report.
Ibong Adarna
The experts were amazed when they saw before their own eyes the mystic Ibong Adarna or Philippine Trogon (Harpactes ardens) on November 8, 2024 at the height of their study.
The Philippine Trogon, with its colorful feathers, is associated by bird lovers with the fictional Ibong Adarna.
Trogons are revered by the Obu Manuvu, an animist indigenous people that inhabit the highland fringes of Cotabato, Bukidnon, and Davao del Sur provinces.
They call the bird “Arak,” a symbol of their heritage which is linked to land and its environment, said Renny Boy Takyawan, an IP heritage advocate.
The “Arak” is the sole species of trogon that is endemic to the Philippines, a briefer of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said.
Conservation efforts are guided by the ongoing monitoring of the trogon’s habitat preferences and population trends, providing significant insight into the present condition of the Mt. Apo Natural Park’s ecosystems.
According to Calomot, the MMWFR is a biodiversity-rich sanctuary that serves as a critical ecological and water source for local communities.
The report said the watershed is home to an array of towering trees, rare plant species, and abundant wildlife. The reserve is a haven for diverse flora and fauna, making it one of the most ecologically significant areas in Mindanao.
According to the study, the MMWFR is a tropical lowland evergreen forest dominated by species like Shorea polysperma (Tanguile) and Shorea almon (Almon), towering trees that form the dense canopy of the reserve.
Abundant tree species
The CSU experts noted in their report the abundance of tree species within the watershed area.
They said the lush forest provides shelter to 167 plant species, including rare species like Ficus fiskei and Artocarpus blancoi, which thrive near its streams. These trees not only contribute to the watershed’s biodiversity but also provide crucial ecological services, such as stabilizing the soil and maintaining water quality.
The forest floor is equally vibrant, with understory plants such as Aglaonema commutatum and Alocasia zebrina, species that flourish under the thick canopy.
The diversity of plant life is a direct result of the forest’s high moisture levels, which support a variety of ecosystems that host a range of amphibians and reptiles. Species like the Nyctixalus spinosus, a rare tree frog, and the venomous Tropidolaemus subannulatus, a viper, are just a few of the herpetofauna that call this forest home, the report said.
Avian Diversity and More
The Mt. Magdiwata Watershed is also a vital refuge for a wide variety of bird species. According to the report, a total of 47 bird species, including 29 endemic to the Philippines, have been recorded in the reserve. Among them, the Philippine Bulbul (Hypsipetes philippinus) is the most abundant, filling the forest with its calls.
It said the diversity of birdlife in the area is indicative of the healthy ecosystem that the reserve maintains. With nearly 7% of the country’s bird species recorded here, Mt. Magdiwata is an important stopover for migrating birds and a critical habitat for resident species.
Beyond birds, the report said the watershed is home to 132 individuals of volant mammals, including fruit bats and other species from the Pteropodidae family. These bats, particularly Cynopterus brachyotis, play an essential role in pollination and seed dispersal, supporting the overall health of the forest.
Living Forest
Silverio Maguinda a.k.a. Datu Tuwa-tuwa, 60, a Manobo tribal leader who was born and raised in, Sumugbong, a village outlying the mountain, said he saw once more wild animals and birds inhabiting the jungles, which he had not seen in a long time. The last time he saw them was when he was still a child.
In his old age, Maguinda said he is glad to see once again rare animals like Philippine iguanas, monitor lizards, orioles, wild boars, and monkeys, On rare occasions, he said, he could still see a Philippine deer.
“Lahi na karon kay mibalik na ang ulan-ulan sulod sa lasang nga dugay nang wa nako matagamtam (It’s quite different now because I feel the rainforest drenching us once more, an experience I never had for a long time),” Maguinda said in Manobo.
He recalled that during the logging boom until the advent of rampant timber poaching activities, the mountain forest had become loose, or “haghag,” and from a distance, large portions looked yellowish (dalag-dalag).
Maguinda earns a living as a developer of reforested areas where he would regularly weed out unnecessary grasses in between growing trees covering 100 hectares, and at the same time serves as a forest guard.. He was actively involved in the replanting of thousands of tree seedlings since 1996.
Challenges
When SFWD initiated the move to protect Mt. Magdiwata from further degradation, a lot of challenges came their way at the start of their activities, from conducting a study of the socio-economic profile of occupants inside the watershed to a thorough consultative awareness drive on the need to rehabilitate the forest.
Luzon said the settlers inside the mountain were full of frustrations from the government environmental agencies due to their failure to compensate them in the previous reforestation program.
He admitted they had a hard time convincing settlers about the need to relocate them outside the delineated boundaries of the watershed until they offered a 90-10 scheme to let land claimants plant fruit trees and agree to waive their rights over the average 3.6 hectare land they occupied in the mountain.
The 90-10 scheme, which is 90 percent share for the dwellers and only 10 percent for SFWD when the fruits will be harvested, turned out to be a win-win solution. As the latter offered to fund the land development activities for the fruit tree plantations, mostly done in a large portion of the forest where regenerated naturally grown trees are still less than five years old.
Luzon said SFWD made an inventory of tree species that still thrived in the forest, which served as their baseline data to develop a comprehensive reforestation program in partnership with the Livelihood Enhancement through Agroforestry Foundation, Inc. (LEAF Foundation).
“Against all odds, we stood on the ground,” teary-eyed Luzon said as he recalled the hardships in the past.
CADT claims
The protected watershed was at the center of a conflict between SFWD and the Oyay Mansaloay Antod Ogow Bando Ugong (OMAUBAO) Tribal Clan Organization.
The dispute that sparked in June last year stems from the tribe’s application for an ancestral domain title (CADT), which may overlap with the watershed’s protected area.
Luzon expressed concerns that granting the tribe’s claims could jeopardize the watershed’s preservation and open the door for potentially harmful mining activities.
While the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) is pushing for validation of the CADT, the dispute led to stalled negotiations early last year.
Local agrarian reform beneficiaries have also raised objections, accusing the OMAUBAO clan of illegally occupying land planted to oil palm. Despite these tensions, OMAUBAO leader Bardo “Datu Hag-um” Bando assured residents that the tribe will protect the watershed.
The resolution of this issue is expected to shape the future of Mt. Magdiwata and set an important precedent for land rights and resource management across the Philippines.
Housing project opposed
Opposition to a four-hectare housing project inside the Mt. Magdiwata Watershed buffer zone has grown after the DENR issued an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) in September 2021.
The project owned by Marea Estates was about to start that same year but was opposed by the Sangguniang Bayan and other concerned residents during a Joint Committee Hearing on July 29, 2021.
SFWD officials, including Luzon, called for the revocation of the ECC, warning that any damage to the watershed would harm the town’s sole water source. SFWD’s board also passed a resolution opposing the project, citing the area’s classification as an environmentally critical zone prone to geological hazards like landslides and seismic activity.
DENR Caraga defended the ECC, stating it imposes conditions on the project, not a final permit. However, SFWD officials criticized the lack of local consultation, and the risks posed to the watershed.
The controversy gained attention after the flash floods caused by Tropical Depression “Vicky” in 2020, which residents linked to land clearing in the area. Local studies suggested the project could have worsened flooding, affecting nearby communities previously spared from such events.
The dispute underscores the tension between development and environmental preservation, with indigenous residents warning that disturbing the sloping land could lead to landslides and further damage the watershed.
Reforestation
SFWD awarded the Mt. Magdiwata Watershed Reforestation Project to LEAF Foundation, which initially covered three years from 1997 to 2000.
The project covered 160 hectares of open and denuded areas within the watershed. In 2001, SFWD expanded the project to cover another 50 hectares, completed in August 2002, and another 50-hectare expansion the following year.
The project highlights the following significant accomplishments: water is now flowing in several creeks and rivers that were once dry, and stakeholders, especially the Indigenous Peoples inside the protected area, played a part in the formulation of the watershed management plan.
SFWD pursued reforesting the remaining denuded areas with their continued tree planting program while strengthening the protection of the forests with a team of forest rangers who have been tasked to monitor and guard the mountain daily.
Some residents living within the buffer zone at the foot of the mountain were tapped as a “social fence” while being offered livelihood assistance to develop agro-forestry organic farms through the “Imong Yuta Ugmara kay Bayaran Ta (Toil your land and we’ll pay)” program, which added a boost to protect the watershed.
The local water district allocated at least P2 million a year for monitoring and evaluation of the watershed.
Better Lives
Beneficiaries of the livelihood program now lead productive lives in the small parcels of land around the buffer zone areas.
Danilo Baton, 62, who has been planting a hectare of lemongrass since last year, is now a main supplier of his produce to the public market with an average of 400 bundles a day. Selling the lemongrass at P10 per bundle, the income helped Baton in sending two children to college.
He used to maintain a five-hectare coconut farm but decided to waive it in favor of the government since it is situated within the watershed. He joined the planting of Acacia mangium and durian fruit trees on his farm for the reforestation project.
Baton recalled that there had been rampant illegal cutting of trees, mostly prime species like Lauan and Apitong, in the area, perpetrated by an officer of the defunct Philippine Constabulary who used to operate a sawmill plant and a leader of the dreaded “Lost Command” or LCs, a paramilitary group of the late retired PC Colonel Carlos Lademora.
“I would always hear the roaring sound of eight chainsaws every single day in our neighborhood,” Baton recalls the dark days of this town when the LCs, an anti-communist militia band, reigned with terror in the 1980s.
Resistance
There was strong resistance when the water district offered settlers, especially in the upland areas of the mountain, a relocation plan to pave the way for the reforestation program.
Among those who were vocal against it was Remegio Abarquez, now manager of Mountain Spring Multi-Purpose Cooperative Water System in Bayugan 2 village.
Abarquez, who used to maintain a coconut farm in the sloping upper portion of Magdiwata, agreed to relinquish his small lot after he understood the better option of reforesting the area.
He was actively involved in the replanting of trees and was encouraged to set up the cooperative that would provide potable water to some 400 households in their village.
Like Abarquez, a pastor of the Church of Spiritual Alpha Omega initially protested the advent of the reforestation program since the land he toiled on within the watershed had both sentimental and religious value.
Evicted
Antonio Donaire, leader of a splinter sect from the Church of the Risen Jesus, once set up a community at the summit of Magdiwata. He said the farm had been their refuge for their belief and livelihood after they were evicted from their farmlands in Barangay Ormaca during the troubled years in the 1980s.
He said the farmlands he and his siblings tilled since they settled in Ormaca were forcibly grabbed without compensation by the state-run National Development Company, which partnered with the British firm Guthrie to develop a vast 7,000-hectare palm oil plantation in San Francisco and Rosario towns in 1981.
“Because of the hardships after we were driven away from our farms, the people were left with no choice but to cut trees in the forest to sell them to unscrupulous buyers,” Donaire said.
Logging Boom
The Donaires are one of the original settlers who arrived in 1958 from Camotes Island in Cebu. His father and three other pioneers set up the community and named it after the places where they came from: Or for Ormoc, Ma for Maasin, Leyte, and Ca for Camotes, or, Ormaca.
They settled in the village they called, in their belief, the promised land at a time of the logging boom when some 2,000 hectares were logged over by a concessionaire company called CBL Logging, the initials of the family names of Coñate, Bringas, and Labrador.
Dalmacio Mucoy, 73, an old-timer resident and former village chair in Mate, said another logging company which paid royalty to concessionaire CBL, logged over practically the hinterlands of their village in 1957.
He said the logging firm “destroyed the once lush forest of Mate when I came here as a young adult. He said the logging operations stretched up to the boundary of Surigao del Sur.
Mucoy, Abarquez, and Donaire shared their recollections in separate interviews on how heavy equipment like cable yarders, wreckers, and bulldozers flattened many forested areas around Magdiwata at the height of the logging frenzy.
Abarquez said CBL even went too far, scalping the mountain by opening up logging roads that traversed around the summit, which lured human inhabitants and disturbed the wildlife.
The Bringas family, who once operated logging separately, used carabaos to drag the felled logs below, damaging more grown-up trees along the way, according to 69-year-old Minerva Antod, a livelihood beneficiary living near the Lapag public swimming resort.
Tragedy Feared
Another threat posed by Magdiwata was small-scale tunnel gold mining, gold panning, and commercial sand and gravel quarrying that are still aplenty in the buffer zone areas.
In 2013, medium-scale miners said to be financed by Chinese capitalists tried to infiltrate the area, which they found had rich gold deposits, but they were met by a strong protest from concerned residents.
Earlier, a company named East Coast Mineral Resources tried to encroach on a possible high-grade area in Mate, but was rebuffed by the municipal council led by town councilor Lerriza de Leon during a session.
A multi-sectoral motor caravan, which drew 4,000 residents, went to the mining areas in the sub-village of Sumugbong, prompting the miners to withdraw their heavy equipment, which were already ready to operate.
Residents in the outlying villages expressed alarm over the occurrences of landslides in many parts of the mountain, which fueled the protest.
A large crack, a kilometer in diameter, was found by forest rangers near the summit in 2014, causing alarm to residents of a possible landslide that may bury an outlying village below when heavy rains occur.
The water district’s watershed monitoring team reported that the soil structure in the area had started “shifting down” and the foundation was growing “weaker.”
“Because of these cracks, surface water percolates directly to the structure of the soil, making it susceptible to landslides,” a SFWD report said.
The team noted that some of the naturally growing Falcatta trees near the site of the cracks had almost been uprooted because their foundations had fallen down the 45-degree slope.
Abundance of Water
Amid the threats facing Mt. Magdiwata, the water sources tapped by SFWD continue to abundantly serve the progressive town, even as population growth has surged in the last five years. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the population of San Francisco town as of the 2020 national census, was 80,760.
Three more surface water sources were built in 2015 from the P130-million loan funded by the Development Bank of the Philippines to address the ever-increasing demand of residents.
Local consumers were fortunate to have not experienced a decline in their water supply despite the long drought that lasted for seven months in 2015.
However, due to the worsening impact of climate change, several households located in the higher grounds in San Francisco town experienced a water crisis in November last year, forcing SFWD to provide water rations through water trucks for more than a month.
Luzon expressed confidence that the townsfolk will not experience a water crisis in the future since the new water sources already tapped can provide the increasing volume demand.
“As long as we keep on preserving Mt. Magdiwata with much care, our mouths will never suffer thirst,”he said.
[Chris V. Panganiban / MindaNews. This story was produced under the Patricio P. Diaz Fellowship Program, implemented by the Mindanao Institute of Journalism and MindaNews under the Media Impact Philippines project. The program is supported by International Media Support (IMS) and co-funded by the European Union and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA)]
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