In 1987 what was thought to be the last mountain cloud rat (locally named “yutyut”) was caught off “Little Mermaid” garden, below Scout Hill by a groundskeeper who thought it looked like a giant shrew.
Believed to be almost extinct—certainly endangered—this species once menaced rice farmers and upland vegetable growers because like the indigenous highland deer (this one is probably extinct) it was exclusively herbivorous. Because there were rice or vegetable farms in Camp John Hay, the poor little rat managed to briefly thrive in it, until that unfortunate encounter with the groundskeeper who was just cleaning up after some messy picknickers. The creature succumbed to a well-timed whack with a rake.
Because of that undeserved notoriety—it turns out traditional vegetables were not exactly the main entrée in their diet—they fell victim to anti-rodent prejudice and were hunted to the point of near-extinction.
Recently, there have been numerous sightings, even captures, of yutyut in Bokod and Itogon which suggests that the species is probably staging a brave if unlikely comeback.
I have not heard of any conservation effort that has endeavored to secure any of these animals and put them into captive breeding programs—but that’s not saying a lot, really.
I have not heard of ANY wildlife study programs that is actively engaged in cataloguing local species of flora and fauna for purposes of mapping their habitats and preserving both organism (plant or animal) and environment.
Again, that should come as no shock. At the rate we are cutting down our pine trees, you would think there is actually a pine tree ERADICATION program being pursued by the government.
Everytime some developer unveils another billboard announcing the rise of another condominium project, people just shrug their shoulders now. How many trees did the DENR approve to be cut down again this time?
The classic official retort is that the developer is required to plant “a million seedlings” sometime somewhere to make up for the arboreal loss.
That’s just like saying of an abortion, “don’t worry, lots of women are still going to get pregnant. There’s really plenty more where THAT came from!”
They miss the point. Promises are made by fools like developers, but only God can make a tree.
In fact He DID. He not only made trees, He made them self-propagating—bearing seeds so they can make more trees after their own kind.
Which is the point we miss. When you cut down ONE pine tree, you are shutting down a whole propagation system that used to produce thousands of pine cones, each one in turn releasing hundreds of tiny winged seeds that travel long distances in the wind to find implantation in some welcoming patch of loam.
There are close to EIGHT BILLION people alive today, who all sprung from just one pair in the garden of Eden. Even after the Great Flood that decimated all of the human race save the family of Noah, his three sons and their wives, we still managed to climb up to 8 billion.
That shows you that to propagate millions, you only need to SPARE a handful. Conversely, to ensure that millions never get to see the light of day, you only need to kill off ONE. Just one.
So every time you cut down ONE pine tree, you just vanished one genealogical line that would have resulted in the progeny of millions of trees—somewhat like the “million” trees a developer is involuntarily made to commit to “produce.”
Put in another way, you’re asking a developer to do BETTER than God, producing a paltry “one million trees”—most of which will probably be sown only in the rich soil of press releases.
Even from the air, you could clearly see that Camp John Hay is one of the last relatively untouched patches of green in the entire city of Baguio.
Beneath that last surviving forest canopy, there thrives God knows how many uncatalogued species of critters clinging on by tooth and nail to that fast shrinking habitat.
My apologies to my pañeros and pañeras but even we, lawyers, are soon to be complicit in that habitat destruction. The proposed new Justice Hall will be located beside the Voice of America lot in Loakan Road. Unless engineers can design the building to levitate above ground, hundreds of pine trees will again have to be cut, sealing the doom of fauna living in this treeland.
I ran into one of these taken-for-granted wild species during one of our walkaround “mini trail hikes” around Camp John Hay just this weekend.
I asked Christine to hold out her hand to provide scale as I took a photo of a rare forest snail we found crawling just to the left of where we were trekking. Whereas a common garden snail could be about as big as your thumb, this one could fill your entire fistful.
Of course, instinct told the little critter I was a dangerous apex predator. So as soon as it sensed my shadow it took off at its best sprinting speed of about ten inches per hour. I tried to keep up to snap the photo you see.
“There’s another one!” Christine yelled. Apparently there were a few more scattered about on the ground around us, all making the frantic exodus to escape this couple of giant mammals wearing multiple layers of colored skin.
Shouldn’t somebody be gathering up these giant snails for study? Or just counting them to see if there’s even any hope in trying to keep them around until a more intelligent generation musters the fortitude to help them keep their God-given niche in this crowded planet.*
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