Beauty & Bounty of Mindanao: A Journey To Baguan Island, Breeding Place Of The Green Sea Turtles!
(This was first posted in March 2020 following my visit to the Turtle Islands Group. part of the Province of Tawitawi when I served as Chairman of the Mindanao Development Authority.)
There is a small island in the Sulu Sea, one of the 7,641 islands in the Philippine Archipelago, which could serve as an actual testing ground of our commitment as a nation to protect the ecology and environment for the sake of the future generation of Filipinos.
Baguan is a 35-hectare island in the Turtle Islands Group, a municipality under the Province of Tawitawi, now part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Small and uninhabited, except for a few workers and volunteers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Baguan Island is the main breeding ground of the protected Green Sea Turtles or Pawikan.
Every year, thousands of Green Sea Turtles burrow in the white sands of the island to lay eggs.
Thousands of hatchlings will come out of the eggs but only a few of them will survive, one or two per hundred, because of natural predators which include their own mothers who eat them and big fish like sharks which devour them as soon as they wade into the sea for the first time.
I spent a night in Baguan Island on March 9 this year to watch the Green Sea Turtles lay eggs and was blessed with that rare opportunity of witnessing a clutch of hatchlings race to the water for the first time.
It was actually a sidetrip to an engagement in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah where I was once of the resource persons in the World Islamic Ecohomic Forum.
I decided to fly to KK well ahead of the scheduled March 12-13 Forum because I wanted to visit the southernmost islands of the Philippines, the Turtle Islands Group.
It only took me and the other staff less than 1 hour to reach Taganak Island from Sandakan using a 600-horsepower speedboat owned by Turtle Islands Mayor Mohamad Faizal Jamalul, even with rough seas.
During the overnight stay in Baguan Island, the 35-hectare protected and no fishing area which serves as the main breeding ground for the Green Sea Turtles, I learned that the volunteer wardens had not received their wages since funding from DENR National Office was cut off.
All because some decision makers did not even consider that the lives of the beautiful creatures and the people protecting them were both endangered by the drastic move.
In spite of the absence of funding, however, the volunteer wardens continued with their task of recording and protecting the Green Sea Turtles.
I was actually supposed to go back to the Turtle Islands and Baguan Island last May but the COVID 19 restrictions prevented me from fulfilling that promise to the people of the islands.
But where I am now, I keep on asking myself: “Ano na kaya ang nangyari sa mga trabante doon na walang sueldo? Nababantayan pa kaya ang mga pawikan?”
Today, I am posting this video again because I would like to challenge the private sector to join me in my advocacy to protect the Green Sea Turtles of Baguan Island.
I am forming a group to be called Guardians of the Green Sea Turtles (GGST) which will start the advocacy to protect these beautiful creatures for the future generation.
Private Sector participation in advodacies such as this is very vital because government could be stiff and bureaucratic and actions which need to be done right away have to go through a tedious and lengthy process.
Huwag tayo lagi umasa sa mga ahensya ng gobyerno kasi mabagal talaga ang burokrasiya at kadalasan bago makarating ang tulong, malala na ang problema.
To borrow and modify an old Pilipino idiom: “Aanhin pa ang tulong kung patay na ang mga pawikan?”
Join me and let us preserve the Beauty and Bounty of Mindanao for our children and grandchildren.
#AmazingBeautyBountyofMindanao!
#TheOtherFaceofMindanao!
#ReachingOutToForgottenFilipinos!

(The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) thanks the Western Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Philippine Coast Guard, Province of Tawitawi, Municipality of Turtle Islands and the people of Turtle Islands.)