Vanishing Frogs Can Defeat Dengue

Vanishing Frogs Can Defeat Dengue

By Michael A. Bengwayan:

Horan Dignay (not his real name) and five other kids played like any other kid in the neighbourhood’s mud pool last year. They went home soaked but ecstatic. That night fever set in on all six kids.

After a week they succumbed in a Philippine hospital north of Manila. The Department of Health and the Baguio General Hospital   blamed dengue  for their untimely deaths.

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Last year, almost 60,000  cases  were reported  in the Philippines, more than 50 of which were fatalities in Benguet province, north Philippines, the National Epidemiology Center of the Philippines' Department of Health said.

This year, despite the availability of dengue vaccine, dengue cases are up by 36 percent,  the government’s health department warned. http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/21/1605081/philippine-dengue-cases-36

The Department of Health (DOH) Epidemiology Bureau recorded a total of 57,026 dengue cases from January to June 25 this year, which is way above the 42,026 cases posted during the same period a year ago.

Dengue is a tropical disease caused by a virus of the mosquito Aedes Aegypti. It is characterized by high fever, headache, rashes, and severe joint and muscle pains. Extreme cases result to bleeding and death of the victim.

As the rainy season hovers, and the temperature going up, dengue once again rears its ugly head[E5] . The carrier of the deadly virus, Aedes egypti, is multiplying by the thousands.

And something man has taken for granted and have killed, maybe the only answer:frogs.

The province of Benguet doesn’t intend to lose any person again due to the disease, thus Benguet State University (BSU) has scientists working to counter the growing dengue threat.

They are bringing back the frogs which used to abound in the land with the communities’ help.

Dr. Luciana Villanueva, BSU’s vice president for research and extension pointed out to this writer, “We have no other recourse but to turn back to nature for help. The frogs are our most effective allies in the fight against the fearsome Aedes egypti mosquito.”

“We are rallying communities not to kill the frogs by not using insecticides for the fourth successive year and positive results are showing,” she added.

Villanueva informed that BSU team encourage locals to make ponds for frogs to naturally set in. They are also distributing pairs of male and female frogs to farmers and hobbyists.

Villanueva led scientists, community leaders, citizens and students last April 30 to celebrate and strengthen the annual International Save the Frogs Day which coincided with Earth Day.

BSU has set up a very large frog pond to increase frog population. “The population of frogs in the Philippines has decreased because of pesticides that destroyed large tracts of frog habitat”, she stressed.

“It must be brought back by urging communities to care for the remaining frogs, maintain a clean environment and through the passage and implementation of strict frog conservation laws,” Villanueva hoped as many students exhibited several ways in saving the frogs through posters, essays, poems, slogans, video and graphic illustrations.

Saving the Frogs an Uphill Climb

“Many communities now realize they have to be a part of nature and not apart from it to exist today given all the diseases and ailments that are occurring,” Dr. Grace Taguba Bengwayan, the project advocate told this writer while observing the large crowd that participated in the International Save the Frogs Day.

“But it will be a long fight to bring back the once-plentiful frog population,” she lamented.

Dr. Bengwayan’s statement stems from another scientist’s discovery that not only frogs but all the amphibian population in the Philippines is on the verge of being wiped out.

Philippines’ amphibian specialist, Dr. Letecia Afuang, said the Philippine amphibian population have drastically gone down in the past twenty years.

Afuang, a professor at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos (UPLB) and in charge of the assessment of conservation status of Philippines amphibians said that there is a lack of awareness in the broader Filipino community of Philippines amphibians and their relevance, leading to the destruction of the creatures.

She noted with approval the efforts being launched by BSU and the communities around it in saving the frogs, but equally warned there is grave danger of an outbreak of diseases in other places in the Philippines where many amphibians and reptiles are becoming extinct.

This is because the population of disease-transmitting insects and vectors is increasing and spreading while their traditional predators are dwindling in number.

“As a result, mosquitoes, including the malaria-transmitting Anopheles and the deadly dengue-causing Aedes Aegypti, are multiplying in great numbers further endangering the health of thousands of not only Filipinos but Asians,” Afuang said.

The highly proactive Cordillera Ecological Center (CEC) based in the province on the other hand said through a statement released on April 30 celebrating Earth Day that the issue of Aedes egypti mosquito population increasing is due to global warming.

CEC stated “Dengue epidemics in the Philippines occur annually in the later half of the year following onset of rainfall and increasing temperature.  It becomes more pronounced on El Niño periods.”

“It is then important to have a moving average temperature (MAT) index yearly so that it becomes a signal or early warning device to the public  that dengue will not only be a possibility but  will be widespread in nature,” CEC explained.

The CEC won the World Bank Environmental Award earlier for being able to determine the onset and spread of dengue-carrying mosquitoes by studying temperature increases.

“The rise of temperature favors disease-carrying insects while equally threatening beneficial small wildlife like amphibians and reptiles that prey on insect pests. For instance, four frogs are now extinct in Benguet and in other parts of the country. Global warming and chemicals have destroyed their habitats,” CEC emphasized.

The Declining Amphibian Population Task Force (DAPTF) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) supports CEC’s revelation, saying ionizing radiation of ultraviolet B resulting from ozone layer depletion has something to do with the decline of amphibian population.

The decline of amphibian population, while worldwide, is overly evident in the Philippines . IUCN named the Philippines as one of the world’s top twenty biodiversity hotspots because of numerous extinct and vanishing living species.

And if the frogs aren’t saved, they may just end up in the long list of IUCN’s Red Handbook.

In Defense of Trees

https://web.facebook.com/ipsum.novus

In Defense of Trees

By Michael A. Bengwayan

Trees have no teeth.  That is the reason why most fall down in Indonesia, why pine stands drop dead and silent from loggers’ chainsaws in the Philippines, and why Himalayan larches crackle in fireplaces in energy-starved Nepal.

Trees have no teeth but have very quiet voices—which is distinct  disadvantage in a competitive world. Fortunately for them, we need them.  And we need them for reasons that man has always found persuasive.  We believe that without them, the atmosphere will choke up, the icecaps will melt, and before we can say reforestation, one of our most precious resources of renewable energy will have been lost.

That is at the root, so to speak.  Of man’s concern for the tree.  That is why forestry programs  are implemented and thousands of acres of trees planted from China to the hills of Scotland.

But there is more to trees than oxygen, carbon or chlorophyll.  A bird, a common house sparrow told me so.  So I say this tongue in cheek.

It happened when two very old two pine trees were felled by my neighbor, a policeman (armed with a tree cutting permit and nailed close to my fence for the purpose that I read it because I stopped all earlier attempts).  The trees have stood there forever and have been taken for granted as part of the scenery, greening our view to the forest every summer, pleasantly as kids romped over the grass in glee.

I went outside and stood as they cut the two trees.  There were six big guys with two chainsaws, the policeman and his family with two other burly fellows who also looked as cops, the barangay chairman with three of his kagawad and some neighbors.   They were all making sure that the two trees will fall down this time and I could not stop them.

The woodcutters discussed how to do the cutting, measured up the trees, paced out where they were to fall and decided how they would be dispatched. The victims, voiceless as I said, stood silent.

One of the men spidered into the canopy of the tree, deftly severed some limbs and attached a big nylon rope.  Two other men fitted a hand winch and attached it to the other tree.  The rope was snarled to life and was put to work  against a steel electric post.

The job was professionally executed, passively accepted by the onlookers and seemed somewhat slightly immoral, reminiscent of whaling where man’s superiority is so obscenely exploited..

It was all over in an hour.  The cutters and onlookers peering at me while the trees were being hacked  to death by roaring chainsaws and machetes.  All the burgeoning growth of long passed seasons—summer, rainy days—the travails of almost 100 years, so easily and swiftly brought to an end.

When the trees fell,  it echoed in the mountain and sent shock waves to the nearby pine forest, into the tiny glen painted by strawberry gardens, to the Longlong Elementary school where pupils lifted their heads and the hillside grass blades quivered.

My onlooking neighbors’’ faces were expressionless.  The policeman and his wife laughed  contentedly. The treecutters shouted to speed up their job.  And I stood silently.  Only the taut nylon rope seemed nervous.  The chainsaws on the ground purred after their kill.

At that moment,  I heard the house sparrows call, a distant mewing from the eaves of my house that sheltered them from rain.  House sparrows are not unusual on the perip[hery of rural life.  The treecutters and their audience did not hear the birds.  They were intent watching the limbs being cut from the tree trunks.  The men muttered how many board feet the trunk will make, from the time the seedling popped from the soil when the country was sold by the Spanish for a measly 15 million dollars, through the American occupation, one World War, man’s first visit to the moon,  and to this very day that I helped vote for a leader I hoped will stop once and for all, any tree cutting in the country.

As the treecutters sat over to chew momma before slicing the tree trunks into timber, I turned around towards the house sparrows’ cry.  The birds left their station, swung down in uncertain ellipses, nervously impelled and flew over where the fallen trees stood.  They swooped over, crying all the while in full sound, mellow and poignant.  They hovered for a minute, called eerily, swept down and upward from 10 feet from the ground .  And were gone.

Everything was still.  A message was sent.  Clear in that stillness of the morning.  I can play it over and over.  A message without words, enigmatic, difficult to construe or misconstrue.

Did they mourn for a loss of a nesting site?  Could it be idle curiosity?  Inquisitiveness?  My experience has no neat explanation within the comfortable parameters of human logic..

My indigenous being tells me the sparrows lifted the spirit of the pine trees on their broad soft wings and carry these to the forests of eternity beyond the horizon.

If birds can emphatize with a tree, how can man, the wisest of all creatures, can’t?

I returned to my house, choose two good pine saplings. I walked, half limped to where the tree cutters and their supporters stood. They gazed at me blankly. I went  near where the trees fell and  planted the two pine seedlings.

No one talked. No one moved.

I walked away.

Grass Whispers

Grass Whispers

I was born and raised in Baguio City, at a time when it was more rural than anything else like a city. My great grandmother lived with us so we were taught to raise chicken, a few pigs and grew some fruit trees from avocados, guavas, cherries, to coffee. I came to know the mountains, the trees, the land, the springs where guppies thrived and green turtles perched on rocks for sunbath. I came to know of edible plants and poisonous ones. Of herbs and wildcrafting, not to mention, supposedly haunts of spirits that guarded the land and hills.

I hiked every ascent of the city and came to know where swallows lay their eggs on rock crevices, where owls peered at daytime and where the sweetest water flowed from a treasured and secret brook. I walked on the land every summer day and never got bored.

Today, even as I live several miles where I was born, I still walk the land. There is always something new to see and learn. Even if I sit on my terrace overlooking trees, plants and a pond, I get to see something new and revealing. Just the other night, I woke up hearing a rustling at the the eave of the veranda and upon going out, was surprised to see a big bird roosting at a ledge where I keep my honey. I did not know what kind of bird it was, but it must have been very tired as it just sat and slept even with my flashlight on its feathery face.

Now and then as I write on the small table outside the bedroom window at night, all sorts of insects come, flutter, invited by the lights. Some hover over my lamp, one or two come close to the laptop and find time to sit..wondering what I was doing on the keys that don’t pay them no mind.

My bees are my regular guests. When I wake up at 2 or 3 am to write liking the chilly wisp of cold air, I disturb them, they come out from their hives and go round and around the light. And all around me too. All I do is sit still. They come and feel who I am and they let me be, never stinging or bothering me. They may think me nuts for being out past graveyard shift instead of being fast asleep but they let me be. So I ignore them as well.

Sometimes I feel they hanker for talk but that people just don’t listen or attempt to listen to them. Which makes me feel a bit guilty because I always proclaim the earth is alive but am short most often than not in feeling that life.

The bees, birds and insects are alive. So are plants, flowers, grass and the trees. How many of us really look down to see if these are alive?

Researches have proven that trees, flowers, weeds and grasses know more that what we know. The smell of a newly-cut grass, for instance is actually the smell of pheromones sent out by the grass. It is threatened, calling to pollinating insects. But we don’t hear it as that because we don’t know.

Do trees have consciousness, emotions, intelligence? Some researches say yes, others are quite about it, those who don’t care say no. We may never know because research is busier making bombs, beauty creams, poison and thinking of how people can become rich, instead of understanding the creations of the world. To me, they’re alive and they matter. The realization of the aliveness of the non-human is the crack in the paradigm, a shift from understanding nature as passive, unfeeling, and mechanical, to seeing the non-human all around us as aware, a huge something in which we, as humans, participate but can never control, that we can study, become aware of, learn about and find many patterns of translation. The assumption that plants and animals have no feelings was made by science hundreds of years ago, for convenience.

Whether I am in my garden tending to the soil or vegetables, raising seedlings or planting trees, I know that I am with life and a certain degree of communication exists, binds and exist in an unsaid dynamism. This act of translation between human and non-human happen everyday, to each and everyone of us. Unfortunately, our conscious lives are unaware of it. Everywhere, in small ways, such translation continues.

To say that plants and trees have no feelings is cultural assumption. It has no scientific basis. This assumption makes it easier to experiment on animals, easier to exploit them, hunt them, or use them as a “resource.” This kind of thinking has resulted in the snarled mix of contradictions, beliefs, sentimentality, superiority, and fear with which humans continue to regard and portray the non-human world.

There are researches that examined plants and animals for ‘intelligence’ and revealed positive results in many new and surprising ways. Such research is finding that certain animals and plants are far more ‘intelligent’ than anyone had ever even guessed. However, intelligence is the wrong word. Consciousness is the wrong word. But science doesn’t have the right words. We have no language because plants and animals are not like humans. Such comparisons are habitual but not useful.

Nevertheless, evidence continues to grow showing that animals are smarter than humans have ever understood them to be.

Among plants and trees, they have great great sensitivity computing complex aspects of their environment and change behavior to optimize fitness within their local environment. They can anticipate changes in weather, climate, temperature and even danger. They are also very generous, more generous than humans.. Nitrogen fixing trees sleep and fold their leaves at night and release water which they don’t need so other plants and trees and make use of the water.

Plants and trees communicate with each other through networks, warn other plants of danger, call for help, feed other plants, or put out pheromones to attract particular insects.

And even as I walk now, I am far from understanding everything what plants and trees tell us. They have been here for millions of years, they know history far more than us, if we get to know everything they have seen and experienced, it may help some of our problems now. On every walk now, a particular insect or bird flies by. I am not sure I interpret them fairly. What kind of knowledge do they have of us? Over generations, birds remember that people harm them. Trees know that people will cut them and the grass knows that man will burn them to nothingness.

The biggest, most profound and most revolutionary shift we could move to now is to live in a world where saying hello to the tree, grass, weed or any plant is a sign of deepest respect and an acknowledgment of our own lack of understanding and knowledge. Greeting a butterfly or bee buzzing by and thanking the soil and water for the life they give us.

But more than saying hello, it is acknowledging that life they have which gives us life. —- to acknowledge the limits of translation, to acknowledge our own unknowing and to acknowledge our own naivity. We are part of the world, and the world is within us as we are within an alive and enormous network of being that looks back at us.

To perceive this is at once so profound and also simple. It begins with the most obvious everyday things around you. The most radical thing you can do is to look down, look around, say hello and then begin to learn what that means.

You can start doing this tomorrow when you wake up..

World's poorest of the poor to hit one billion by 2020

World's poorest of the poor to hit one billion by 2020...by Michael A. Bengwayan

'Nothing to eat': Beggars beg for money on the traffic road in Jakarta. Many countries around the world are fighting to eradicate poverty. Picture: EPA

MANILA, PHILIPPINES

Monday, December 15, 2008

IN THE arid dunes of sub-Saharan Africa, women walk six hours to fetch water with nothing to eat. Arriving home, one mother decides who among her four children will eat the last oatmeal from a food aid caravan three weeks back, and who will starve.

The picture is no different in The Philippines where in the Visayan region, rural mothers scour the forests for something to eat as crops have failed. Their counterparts in Manila eat whatever food they get from the garbage, unmindful of their health.

These are images of the world's poorest of the poor. They are trapped in long-term poverty where most likely, their children, if they survive, will live in worst or similar conditions. They are hardcore poor, extreme poor and ultra poor. They are the victims of chronic poverty because they are in it for a long, long time, an entire life or even across generations.

Who and where are they? The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) of London says there are some 500 million people in Sub-Sahara Africa, East Asia and Pacific, South Asia and the other parts of the world since 2000. It is projected to reach a billion people in five to ten years.

ODI says the chronically poor people are working people with only a minority unable to engage in labour markets. These people are those who are discriminated against such as the Dalits and Harijans or more known as "Untouchables" in India, socially marginalised people, members of ethnic, religious, indigenous, nomadic and caste groups, bonded labourers, refugees and internally displace people; disabled people and those with ill health and the young and the old. Often, poor women and girls are the most likely to experience life-long poverty, ODI said.

There are five main reasons seen behind chronic poverty, ODI bared. These are insecurity trap, limited citizenship, spatial disadvantage, social discrimination and poor work opportunities. Those who live unprotected within insecure environments often experience an extended duration in poverty. Conflict and violence are obvious sources of insecurity as are economic crisis and natural hazards. These are now evident in many countries in Africa.

People engaged in political spheres also are trapped in chronic poverty because they do not have meaningful political voice, and lack effective and legitimate political representation and power.

In many parts of the world, remoteness, certain types of natural resources endowments, political disadvantage and weak integration can all contribute to the creation of intra-country spatial poverty traps.

ODI explained the chronically poor often experience traps based on their positions within households and communities. Such social structures evolve with social orders such as class and caste systems, ethnicity or gender specific roles, responsibilities and rights. Chronically poor people often live in countries and regions where work opportunities are very limited; and even where there is broad-based growth, the employment generated is exploitative with unhealthy working conditions.

Based on country development trajectories, the 2008 Chronic Poverty Report (CPR) said the poorest of the poor are those who have low per capita income, have high child mortality, high fertility and undernourished populations.

By analysis, one can say that the number of these poor people worldwide can be lessened if they are provided social protection and assistance.

They should also be reached by public services such as vital reproductive health services, and post primary education which are keys in breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty and have dramatic effect on chronic poor households.

The development of anti-discrimination and gender empowerment policies are essential and strategic urbanisation and migration also contribute to lessening the world's chronic poor, CPR recommended. - Michael A Bengwayan

The Brunei Times

Toyota Award for BT Writer

http://bt.com.bn/home_news/2007/12/09/toyota_award_for_bt_contributor

Toyota Award for BT contributor

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Sunday, December 9, 2007

AN ENVIRONMENTAL non-government organisation (NGO) of the Philippines called PINE TREE, founded and led by writer-journalist and environmentalist Dr Michael A Bengwayan, who also contributes for The Brunei Times, was one of the 12 NGOs to win the 2007 Toyota Environmental Award.

The winners were announced by Toyota on its web pagehttp://www.toyota.co.jp/en/environment/ecogrant/.

The Toyota Environmental Activities Grant Programme is a corporate philantropic activity by the Toyota Motors Corporation to support environmental revitalisation worldwide for the purpose of sustainable development. A total of 530 applications (373 under general grants and 157 under small-scale grants) were submitted by environmental non-profits in Japan and overseas during the application period that started April 27, 2007 and ended June 29. After serious deliberations in the selection committee meeting (Chair: Dr Keiko Nakamura, Director General, JT Biohistory Research Hall), Toyota Motor Corporation, together with experts from Japan and overseas, concluded that the grant of 160 million yen would be awarded to 27 projects (12 under general grants and 15 under small-scale grants).

The award allows the 12 NGOs to conduct activities that support sustainable development. PINE TREE won an award worth US$75,000 to support a project called Energising farms and households through Bio-Fuel Production and Extraction of Petroleum Nut (Pittospforum resineferum) Cordillera Region, Philippines.

The Brunei Times

Brunei Times writer wins World Bank ecology award

http://bt.com.bn/environment/2008/04/18/brunei_times_writer_wins_world_bank_ecology_award

THE Benguet-based environmental group Pine Tree founded and led by Ford Foundation Fellow and Echoing Green Foundation Fellow Dr Michael A Bengwayan won the World Bank funded award of Panibagong Paraan 2008 for an ecological project to prevent further dengue infestation in La Trinidad, Philippines. Bengwayan also writes for The Brunei Times. 

The award, worth one million pesos ($32,000), was made yesterday by World Bank Philippine Country Director Bert Hoffman at the awarding of the 2008 Panibagong Paraan 2008 at the SM Megamall Cultural Trade Center. DILG Undersecretary Austere Panadero represented the government. Bengwayan accepted it for Pine Tree.

Every two years, the World Bank together with different international funding institutions bring together government and non-government agencies to compete for the most inovative project awards that can bring foster community development in the fields of basic services, environment, livelihood and good governance . This year, more than 500 applied, 99 made it to the finals and only 31 were awarded.

Pine Tree earlier won the Toyota Foundation 2007 Environmental Award, the National Geographic Society Award and the King William III of Netherlands award on forestry. 

Pine Tree is an educational, training, research and information center promoting environmental justice, indigenous peoples' resource rights, anti-biopiracy and community-based seeedbanking 

Pine Tree's project on dengue prevention will make use of early warning systems, volunteer search and destroy groups, production of dengue natural enemies and mosquito plant repellants.

The Brunei Times

Where is Your Place?
Michael A. Bengwayan

I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future, their fate and their place. Everyone has places that matter, even if they’ve only been there once in their lives. There are places where we feel most alive, most like ourselves. They are places of inspiration.

When I was a kid, the knoll on a hill was the safest place, most life-giving place I knew. Or the pine forest of the Methodist Church beside Easter School/College. I vividly recall the sting of being left out by my classmates because I had no money to buy snacks. I would hide during recess and go back to the classroom when the bell rings to resume classes. When I failed to get an honor roll in high school, I hid here, eating my broken heart and sadness. What saved me on those days was my affinity for place. I would close my eyes tight and forget my classmates buying sweets, candies, rolls and receiving awards at the quadrangle. I would conjure up an image that I had no need for those. That what I need is just a place to hide.

Somehow I knew that visualizing this place of peace—the chief place I felt a sense of wholeness and completion—would ease the inevitable pain of not being wanted or separated from my friends. Where healthy visualization ends and escapism begins, I did not know then. I do know now. But I do know that my sense of place and my ability to honor that connection was a great gift, uncovered early and still a valued resource in life.

I have great affection for the place I was born and reared, Baguio City, if only the family of Henry Sy, the city mayor, understand, and the place I live now—La Trinidad and Tublay. I’ve been in several US, European, Asian and African places but my heart is where I feel most placed. This almost ironic considering I spent so much time in many places. But with all my traveling, there has not been a time when I wasn’t relieved to see the pine trees of Baguio, the winding Bued river. I love Baguio for all that it is—culturally rich, reasonably progressive, friendly and very real—and for all that it isn’t—too crowded, becoming dirty, too full of itself. I hate Baguio for its corrupt and greedy politicians and businessmen. I hate its pretenders. I hate what it is becoming into.

I love the past, the present and the future. They are so closely connected. There are people who care for what Baguio must be. There are people like me who look at Baguio as sacred place because it brings our spirit into harmony with life in our daily living. We want a place where our minds are clear and fully present to life, and the world around us, because our place is sacred. We want to help create the place we love by ritually changing and physically mending our abused environment. It is a means for us to focus our mind of anchoring and aligning the flow of spirit and force to our physical environment.

Because this is our foundation. This is our place beyond place.