Credit should go to The Legend Palawan for their courage, and vision, to promote Puerto Princesa as a prime destination, the jump-off point not only to the towns on the main island but also beyond, to the rest of the 1,780 islands of Palawan.
The picture of the beyond is what Puerto Princesa, and Palawan, is all about: a nature sanctuary as dramatic and astonishing and picturesque as any other in the world. Consider: two UNESCO World Heritage sites – the St. Paul Underground River and the Tubbataha Reefs National Marine Park. Then there’s the Calauit Island Wildlife Sanctuary (which features stunning African wildlife); the El Nido caves where are harvested the edible and high-priced birds’ nests; the Tabon Caves where scientists had stumbled upon the oldest habitation in Southeast Asia; and the Honda Bay Islands, home to the world’s most exotic underwater flora and fauna.
The other interesting side of the picture is what the people of Puerto Princesa are doing, in their small ways, to keep this natural legacy of theirs conserved and flourishing for future generations.
Rex Lao, a marine biologist and guide connected with The Legend Palawan, has made a career out of making people in the barangays and students in the city aware of the importance of preserving the denizens of the vast kingdom of 12 islands called Honda Bay, extending 12 kilometers north to south along the Sulu Sea, where are found magnificent corals, spotted sharks, rare species of turtles and the dugong. He takes to guiding important tourists and media on island-hopping tours – to the circuitous sandbar of Snake Island, to the Pandan Island fishing community, to the Dos Palmas Island Resort on Arraceffi Island, and for special-interest groups, bird-watching on mornings across the skies above Honda Bay, or watching the aquatic show of spinner and bottlenose dolphins and whale sharks, or on evenings from Bat Island, witnessing hordes of large fox bats swarming across the purple skies. He lectures to students while sailing across the bay. He coordinates with the barangays on fish density and coral cover assessment and other data-gathering activities conducted by the UNDP in cooperation with LGUs.
"In the three declared protected areas," Rex Lao says, "in Manolo (fish game), Puntod (fish sanctuary) and Binduyan (marine sanctuary), where there are strictly no fishing activity and regulated tourism activity, 85 percent of the people are convinced of the importance of continuing support in protecting Honda Bay."
On the other hand, there’s also Edong Magpayo, program manager of the Palawan Conservation Corps (PCC), an environment-focused NGO targeting out-of-school and less fortunate youths in the province. "We conduct," says Magpayo, "six-month residential programs like wellness and values formation, capacity building such as leadership, team-building, gender sensitivity, theater workshop and write shop, and personality enhancement.
"We also teach environmental restoration, like basic ecology, bioengineering, tree planting, coastal or water cleanup. We teach them technical skills with the help of TESDA (Technical Education Skills Development Authority) to help them find a good job after the program so they can help their families when they return to their respective communities."
It’s not as easy as it sounds. PCC crucially needs funds to be able to continue what it has started in its belief that "youth is the hope of our environment and their communities." Magpayo continues to surf the Internet, to network with other agencies, to submit proposals to agencies and foundations, in the hope of finding "partners to realize our one-of-a-kind programs for the youth and the environment." Kind-hearted souls can reach PCC at www.pccphilippines.netfirms.com or www.friendster.com/profiles/pal-corps.
Nanay Dayang Prieto, a colorful character only Puerto Princesa could have produced, has been championing the cause of the environment long before it became fashionable for citified folk to do so. At the same time, she’s been promoting the arts and culture of native Palawan. The center of her activities is Galeri Kamarikutan on a 1.2-hectare property planted to endemic trees – rare kamagong and ipil and the mararango (a cousin of the neem tree of India), the curtain vine, and orchids – an evocation of the kamarikuta, the wilderness. The prominent "foreigners" in the center are the Japanese koi, a gift to her from her brother-in-law, swimming and energetically propagating in the pond built around the center.
Galeri Kamarikutan is an art gallery/performance hall/show window/coffee shop/restaurant all rolled into one, constructed with cogon and bamboo and coconut lumber. When it’s not sponsoring lectures or workshops by artists like Charles Wandag of Kalinga or Nonoy Alcalde of Bacolod, the center holds regular artistic performances, usually at dusk when the day briefly becomes its most beautiful, by the Masino Interay, an ensemble of gongs and native drums from the deep south, a national awardee for indigenous music whose oral epic has been recorded by a French anthropologist and stored in a museum in Paris; or the all-artist Pagdiwata, an arts festival, including the Talaandig from Mindanao which teaches sayaw (dance) and surat (syllabary); or the famed Pinicpican.
The shop falls short of any description in words; it is better experienced. The same with Nanay Dayang, who has been adopted by the Tagbanua tribe as royalty. The Tagbanuas, numbering 13,600 today, make up the largest ethnic tribe in Palawan (the smallest are the Batak, perilously close to extinction at 1,000). An adopted royal like Nanay Dayang may mean the preservation of a way of life and a force of nature that is Puerto Princesa.