From Ridge to Reef: How PBCAI and Palawan Communities Protected Nature and Built Resilience in 2023

Conservation Begins with Communities

What does it take to protect Palawan's forests, mangroves, beaches, and seas?

For the Palawan Biodiversity Conservation Advocates, Inc. (PBCAI), the answer begins with the people who live alongside these ecosystems.

Throughout 2023, PBCAI worked with coastal communities, fisherfolk, farmers, local governments, people's organizations, volunteers, government agencies, and conservation partners across Palawan. The year's activities ranged from protecting sea turtle nesting beaches and restoring typhoon-damaged mangroves to strengthening marine protected areas, reducing plastic pollution, and helping communities develop more sustainable sources of food and income.

Behind these activities was a simple principle: healthy ecosystems and resilient communities depend on each other.

This principle became especially visible on Dumaran Island, where PBCAI began implementing an ambitious ridge-to-reef conservation program covering the municipalities of Dumaran and Araceli.

Protecting Sea Turtles—and Changing Perceptions

Sea turtles have returned to Palawan's shores for generations. Yet protecting them requires more than guarding nests.

In some communities, knowledge about sea turtles and their ecological importance remains limited. PBCAI's experience in Dumaran Island showed that conservation must therefore begin with understanding.

In July 2023, PBCAI trained 30 community members from five barangays—San Juan, Bacao and Catep in Dumaran, and Dalayawan and Tinintinan in Araceli—where sea turtle nesting sites had been identified.

Participants learned about sea turtle biology, their importance to marine ecosystems, proper handling and rescue, tagging, nest identification, hatchery establishment, monitoring, and egg-transfer procedures. Participants themselves acknowledged that without activities such as the training, they might never have understood the importance of protecting sea turtles.

By the end of 2023, Sea Turtle Monitoring Teams were watching nesting beaches in five barangays. Six nests were monitored, 519 eggs were transferred to ex-situ hatcheries, and 139 hatchlings were released to the sea in December.

PBCAI also brought sea turtle conservation beyond its community project sites. A separate lecture reached 48 Western Command soldiers preparing for deployment to the Kalayaan Group of Islands in the West Philippine Sea, equipping them with knowledge on what to do when encountering marine turtles.

Keeping Plastic Away from Sea Turtle Habitats

Protecting sea turtles also means protecting the beaches where they nest.

With support from SEE Turtles, PBCAI conducted cleanup activities along the west coast of Puerto Princesa City, including nesting areas used by hawksbill, olive ridley, and green sea turtles.

The project eventually removed 910.8 kilograms of waste from 11.6 kilometers of coastline. Much of what volunteers found was familiar: plastic bottles and wrappers, plastic sacks, discarded fishing nets, nylon ropes, glass bottles, and other waste.

But the cleanup was about more than collecting garbage.

Barangay officials, residents, tourism groups, Bantay Pawikan members, ancestral domain guards, PBCAI volunteers and staff worked together. Conservation became something communities participated in rather than something done on their behalf.

During one early-morning cleanup in Simpokan, the team witnessed another side of this work: sea turtle eggs being transferred to a hatchery and almost 100 newly emerged hatchlings being released to the sea.

Restoring Mangroves After Typhoon Odette

Typhoon Odette left another conservation challenge.

In Dumaran, PBCAI received support from the Forest Foundation Philippines to assess mangrove areas damaged by the typhoon and determine what communities would need to restore and sustainably manage them.

Eight barangays expressed interest in rehabilitating damaged mangroves, with participating barangays committing five to ten hectares each as prospective rehabilitation or restoration sites.

The work continued under PBCAI's broader ridge-to-reef initiative.

In Tinintinan, Araceli, approximately 7.8 hectares of mangroves damaged by Typhoon Odette were identified. The barangay government also proposed rehabilitating an abandoned fishpond covering approximately 4.5 hectares.

In Dalayawan, community members became directly involved in restoration. By the end of the reporting period, they had collected and planted 47,000 mangrove propagules. Another 2,000 propagules were planted in an abandoned fishpond in Tinintinan, while 1,000 wild seedlings of different species were being nurtured in a nursery for future planting.

For these communities, restoring mangroves is not only about bringing trees back.

Mangroves help stabilize coastlines, provide habitat for marine life, and strengthen the natural protection of coastal communities against storm surges—functions that become increasingly important for communities exposed to extreme weather.

Thinking from Ridge to Reef

One of PBCAI's biggest steps in 2023 was the launch of the Ridge to Reef Ecosystems Resource Management in Dumaran Island, Palawan project.

The approach recognizes something communities already experience in everyday life: what happens upstream eventually affects what happens downstream.

Forests, watersheds, farms, rivers, mangroves, seagrass areas, coral reefs, fishing grounds, and coastal communities are connected.

The project therefore brings together watershed enhancement, upland and marine biodiversity conservation, coastal and marine resource management, sustainable livelihoods, natural-resource governance, and community participation rather than treating them as separate concerns.

Its long-term aspiration is equally important: to enrich the environment so that it can continue providing quality ecosystem services for the next generation.

Protecting the Sea Through Community Stewardship

The ridge-to-reef initiative also strengthened the protection of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

In Araceli, PBCAI worked with the MPA Monitoring Team and the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office to install mooring buoys marking a fish sanctuary.

In Bacao, Dumaran, mooring buoys were also installed in the Pungtod Nagtalula Marine Protected Area, with assistance from the municipal government through MENRO and the Municipal Agriculture Office. Divers helped position the anchors while avoiding coral areas.

BFAR also conducted fisheries law-enforcement training aimed at preparing fish wardens to monitor these protected areas.

The message behind these interventions is important: an MPA becomes stronger when the people living around it understand why it exists and have the capacity to help protect it.

When Livelihood Is Part of Conservation

PBCAI's 2023 experience also reinforces an important reality about conservation in rural communities:

People cannot be expected to protect natural resources without considering how families put food on the table.

PBCAI therefore worked with communities and technical partners to identify livelihood opportunities appropriate to their local resources.

Communities selected activities including milkfish culture, mud crab culture, fish processing, giant freshwater prawn culture, and organic farming. Technical training, site assessments, and business planning were incorporated to improve the likelihood that these enterprises could succeed.

The connection to conservation is deliberate.

PBCAI's project Theory of Change states that access to sustainable livelihood opportunities can provide supplemental household income, while knowledge of improved farming technologies and conservation-based enterprises can reduce people's need to turn to kaingin, illegal logging, and wildlife poaching as means of subsistence.

It is conservation that recognizes economic reality.

Building Capacity Beyond PBCAI

PBCAI also helped strengthen other organizations working to protect Palawan.

In April 2023, with funding from the Forest Foundation Philippines, PBCAI organized a project-development workshop in El Nido. It brought together 50 participants representing 44 civil society organizations from six municipalities in Northern Mainland Palawan.

A total of 46 concept notes were submitted, of which 34 were presented and reviewed during the workshop. The initiative sought to give local organizations the skills needed to develop stronger conservation proposals and potentially access resources to implement them.

The value of this work goes beyond a single training.

When local organizations become stronger, conservation capacity spreads across communities and landscapes.

Conservation Is Ultimately About People

PBCAI's accomplishments in 2023 can be measured in numbers:

47,000 mangrove propagules planted in Dalayawan.
910.8 kilograms of coastal waste collected.
519 sea turtle eggs transferred to hatcheries.
139 hatchlings released.
Communities trained.
Marine protected areas strengthened.
Livelihoods developed.

But these numbers tell only part of the story.

The deeper accomplishment is the growing involvement of communities themselves.

PBCAI's approach recognizes that the people who depend most directly on Palawan's forests, farms, mangroves, and seas also have an important role in deciding how these resources are protected and managed.

The 2023 report explicitly emphasizes building community capacity, ownership, and stewardship so communities can sustainably manage their natural resources while continuing to derive livelihoods and well-being from them.

That is what community-based conservation in Palawan looks like: not simply protecting nature from people, but working with people to protect the ecosystems that sustain them.

And from the ridges of Dumaran Island to its mangroves, nesting beaches, and fishing grounds, that work continues.