Buasao Forest: The Last of Cordillera's
Pine and Mossy Forest Ecotome
By Michael A. Bengwayan
You never
know when you take a quantum leap. It just happens. When you are called for it.
Most often, it provides you with some of
the most unexpected challenges, education and pleasures.
On the early
summer of ’99 after a stint in Nepal, I read a letter handed to me twice, then thrice. “Your
application for a grant was approved. You hereby instructed to start doing an
eco-profile of Buasao watershed”, the letter
from the Foundation of Philippine Environment (FPE) said.
I handed the
letter to my assistant Richard “Dick”Botengan, a childhood friend since we were
7. He read and looked at me with an unsaid question “ So?” I knew what was in
his mind. Buasao watershed, cradling the untouched pine and mossy forests of
Besao, Mountain Province and Tubo, Abra, is bastion of the New Peoples’ Army
(NPA). But then Dick and I have been in many risky places.
“Let’s do
it”, he answered his own query..
Wasting no
time, I gathered a team of nine people (I and Dick included)—foresters Danilo
Killip and Arlene Cid, Johnny Budod, late Bonel Walsiyen, photojournalist
Ernesto Raguro, Innocencio Estangki and our guide Michael Tauli.
We went to
an adventure that changed our lives.
High in the
mountains of the Gran Cordillera, swathed in mists and forests, a
long-forgotten movement of the Earth caused lime and basalt rock to protrude,
and over the millennia became covered
with moss morphing beyond lichens and liverworts to quietly evolve into its own
unique ecology.
The people
of Besao, when they discovered it, called it Buasao where only a few birds sing because of
the cold harsh weather. Alas, not too many wildlife venture into the place to
break the mirror of smoothness of the waters coming out from a rock that spells
life for many villages until Abra..
But other
creatures live in and around it, and a rich variety or plant life nourishes in
its environs. The water of a small pond, the swamp surrounding it, the narrow belt or
tableland between the mountain slopes,
and the slopes themselves, all provide fertile and varied habitats.
It is
the richness or this plant life which has been chiefly responsible for its
declaration as a specially protected area watershed by the government. Conservation of forest in the
Philippines benefits from the circumstance that about a third of the Cordillera
region’s area are still forested, and so fall under the jurisdiction of the state,
which is also responsible for conservation. In 1986 Buasao was declared one of the eight specially
protected areas of the region.
The
nearest point of departure for Buasao is Gueday to Agawa from Kin-iway. From here, I led
my team to a two day 16 hour mountain climb, to a almost a month immersion….explaining
to Dick and the rest, our work and providing information about the environment that
was ahead of us.
There is
freedom when you are high up in the mountains. The air is marvelously fresh and
fragrant with the late afternoon smell of damp pine woods. The scene commands a splendid view overlooking the
confluence of two rivers and endless pine forests.
Early the
next morning we climbed up a ridge and began the tortuous ascent to the top
where water gushed out fro a precipice itself. Soon the previous night's
lodging is lost in the folds of the mountains and the river becomes a whisp of
silver. The only access to the small lake is by a bush and clump of thorny forest
shrubs inhabited by small green leeches that get into any hole in your body. The
mountains surrounding the promontory are mostly clad in Pinus kesiya and fir-like Cryplomeria japonica which grows
faster than the indigenous cypress Chamacypans
philippeninsis and yews Taxus
sumatrana, although large stands of virgin forest, a mixture of the pines
and hard woods, still remain.
Around the headwaters
itself is an untouched pine forest of close to 1,000 hectares with trees aging
about 500 years old and can only be embraced by five people. This natural mixed
forest is nourished because it never
lacks is water. It rains in these mountains almost 200 days of the year, and
even when it is not actually raining the clouds often settle on the mountain
tops and drift into their folds and clefts..
But we were
lucky. The climb to the peak was in bright sunshine, the deep green of the
forests growing brilliantly against the clean blue of the sky with a few white
clouds; the air, when we broke our journey now and then, was intoxicatingly
fresh. The sun was still shining on our second day of climb and right to the
cave which produces the water that gleamed in perfect stillness between
tree-covered mountain slopes.
We stood in a small wedge of ground, 5,500 feet above sea
level, surrounded by peaks which soar to nearly 8,000 feet. There was a small
pond about a hectare big where the stream which feeds it trickles gently
through the high grasses. The margins of the pond are shallow, revealing
through the limpid tea-brown water, stained with acid from the encircling
trees, the soft, muddy bottom and the underwater plants. A few steps, it seems,
would take us to the farther side. Yet the center of the pond, the cleft
between two mountains, was surprisingly deep.
No bird
sings. Hardly a leaf rustles. Only the intermittent stirring of the water gives
a hint of motion, and the tendency to speak in whispers is almost overwhelming.
Wild goats, boars, monkeys, even black civet cats—as well as a
host of lesser animals such as rats, mice, and squirrels—are supposed to live
in these mountains, but there is no sign of them. Nor of the ducks, hawks,
doves, and other birds found in the region.
Soon a cloud
descends, but even before it engulfs us, we get some inkling of the perpetual
dampness of the region. The path beside the brook runs under trees heavily
bearded with hanging mosses and covered with minute ferns. Despite the
sunshine, moisture drips from the trees and miniature forests of inch-high
seedlings of the mighty pine trees that nourish on the rotting trunks of parent
trees.
The mosses are
fascinating. So many varieties grow in so small an area. Plump, velvety
cushions compete for space with colonies sporting tiny red masses atop
quivering fillaments, and others with serrated outgrowths make them difficult
to distinguish from the smallest of the ferns, some with fronds only half an
inch long.
Trees
covered in heavy moss look as though they have caught algae from a receding
tide.
Of the
species of the trees which grow either around the lake or on the slopes above
it, the yew is probably the most impressive. They are very long-lived and
thousand-year-old trees are quite common. The Illicium tashiroi, a
relative of the magnolia and star anise, and the hemlock-not the small plant
whose juice Socrates was condenmed to drink for teaching the youth of Athens to
think, but the evergreen tree Tsuga chinensis—are also part of the
forest community. Rhododendrons and berberis grow wild here as does a
smooth-leafed cousin of the holly, the Ilex mutchagara. And tangled by
the very margins of the lake are delicate pink roses, Rosa Philippeninsis, looking as if they had strayed from someone's
garden.
It is the small
river from the cave, itself, however,
which produces the strongest sensation. Among the plant species living in
its waters was found one hitherto unknown to man, the Sparganium fallax,
an unassuming little plant that looks like a sturdy grass with tufts of seeds
in the axils of its triangular stems. Around the lake and in the strip of
tableland are many plants which look familiar—close relatives of plants found
in other parts of the world. Oxalis and pellonia, wild raspberry, viburnum,
woodwardia, polygonia and wolfs foot.
The cloud
turns to rain and the wind picks up. All trees are "wind-trained," a reminder that despite the calm of our
arrival this is a high mountain forest beaten by the elements where the
tropical plants of the lowland would soon perish.
Here, for
three weeks we stayed—collecting and
identifying flora and some fauna. Three weeks of cold and chilly days but warm
sunshine.
Did we see
or talk to any of the NPAs?
That is
another story./michael bengwayan
