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Literature

Nature photographer Nigel Hicks on why the Philippines is critical to global biodiversity

The writer and photographer behind "Wild Philippines" says the Philippines has one of the world's greatest biodiversities – greater than the Galapagos Islands or Madagascar

Illustration: Cheryl Owen

November 12, 2020

Text: Alya B Honasan

Images: Cheryl Owen

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Illustration: Cheryl Owen

Nigel Hicks was living in Hong Kong in the 1990s when he first found himself in the Philippines. The professional nature photographer, originally from Devon in the United Kingdom, had been working with a London-based publisher on a couple of large projects in China when they thought of sending him to the Philippines to do the same.

“I was only too happy to oblige,” Hicks says. “To be totally honest, my initial involvement with the Philippines, back in the 1990s, was purely because the London publisher sent me, under the false impression that I must already know a lot about the country.”

Hicks continues: “I didn’t, but I didn’t bother to correct their view, and pretty soon I found I was learning really a lot about the Philippines. Now of course, in certain quarters I’m the go-to guy for anything Philippines, and that’s just great by me.”

I’m never quite sure who the climate change deniers are, or what they’re thinking. Are they so cocooned in their air-conditioned urban offices that they are completely blind to what’s happening?

Hicks recently released Wild Philippines, a book about the wildlife, wild habitats, protected areas and conservation issues of the country, which he claims has one of the world’s greatest biodiversities – “greater than many much better known spots, such as the Galapagos Islands or Madagascar.”

Hick’s newly released book about wildlife in the Philippines

Have you always been keen on the study of wildlife? Any favorite memory of an encounter with nature growing up? What about when you first picked up a camera?

I studied Biology as a student, right up to PhD and post-doctoral level, though it was a very different kind of Biology from what I’m involved with now. That was laboratory science, really. I gave it up when I felt my mind getting narrower and wanderlust ever stronger.

So the photography eventually became a tool for me to put over the beauty and crucial role of the natural world, still very much a part of the Biology I’d initially studied, but at the other end of the spectrum.

Because it is an island nation that has never had much by way of land links with mainland Asia [the Philippine] islands have developed a pretty unique plethora of terrestrial plant and animal wildlife

I first picked up a camera when I was 10 years old, but at that time my photography was more about travel and places rather the environment or wildlife. That had to wait until much later, when I reached a point when I could use tourism photography to pay the bills, while the nature photography was the real passion.

In your opinion, what makes the biodiversity of the Philippines especially unique or interesting?

Philippine biodiversity is utterly critical to global biodiversity both on land and in the sea, and unfortunately few people in the Philippines (or anywhere else, actually) really understand this.

Because it is an island nation that has never had much by way of land links with mainland Asia, its 7,000-plus islands have developed a pretty unique plethora of terrestrial plant and animal wildlife.

The Philippines is right at the epicentre of the Coral Triangle…today’s distribution hub for the vast majority of tropical corals and fish species

The Philippines has a huge diversity of species, over 60% of which is found nowhere else. When taken on a species per hectare basis, the Philippines has one of the world’s greatest biodiversities, greater than many much better known spots, such as the Galapagos Islands or Madagascar.

In the sea, the Philippines is right at the epicentre of the Coral Triangle, a region covering six Southeast Asian nations that provides both the evolutionary origins and today’s distribution hub for the vast majority of tropical corals and fish species.

One of the many corals found in the Moalboal, Cebu.

There are just over 700 species of coral worldwide, for example, with 600 of them found around the Philippines’ coasts, from where their larval stages are distributed out across much of the Indian Ocean and the western part of the Pacific. Without Philippine coral reefs there would be few coral reefs anywhere, and consequently few reef fish.

Wild Philippines includes a chapter on national parks and protected areas. Why do you think such sanctuaries are critical to conserving Philippine flora and fauna?

The Philippines’ protected areas have not been laid out randomly, but are positioned to focus on those areas where the wild environment is still in good condition, and where wildlife has a reasonable chance of being protected, where protection and conservation efforts can be maximised to give the most benefit to the maximum numbers of important plant and animal species.

The notion that conservation is at odds with “progress” is a complete nonsense and always has been – it has just taken far too long for enough people to realise this!

Because of the Philippines’ unique island structure, both the plant and animal wildlife can be quite different in different parts of the country. It’s no good protecting rainforest in northern Luzon, for example, and then thinking that this is representative of the whole country.

So rainforest scattered all over the country needs to be protected because both plants and animals in Mindanao are quite different from those in Luzon, for example, or even from the western Visayas to the eastern, while Palawan is completely different again. And the process of creating new protected areas is still ongoing as more is still being learned.

Medinilla flowers near Guintubdan, Mt Kanlaon Natural Park, near Bacolod, Negros, the Philippines.
Southern Luzon Cloud Rat, Pallidus cumingi, Avilon Zoo, Manila, the Philippines.

Does the argument that conservation and progress are mutually exclusive still hold any water, in your view?

The notion that conservation is at odds with “progress” is a complete nonsense and always has been – it has just taken far too long for enough people to realize this!

For one thing, what is progress? I remember that when I was a child all kinds of atrocities against nature were committed in the name of “progress”, without anyone really questioning what was meant by that word.

There are, of course, many kinds of progress, not one, and it’s a question of what kind of future we want to choose. The answer to that question will determine the type of “progress” we opt for.

Healthy forests ensure a good water supply, stabilize the soil, provide a range of potential products that we can’t cultivate and even help to clean the air

If we opt for no-holds barred industrialization and technological development at the expense of everything else, then I don’t think it takes much to work out that we can expect a fairly bleak future. That’s not progress at all.

If the air is so polluted that it’s toxic to breath, if the water is so filthy that it can’t be drunk, and if the land, rivers, lakes and sea are so depleted that we can’t feed ourselves, then none of us has any future at all.

So although people like me do tend to justify the importance of nature conservation in terms of protection of wildlife for its own sake, actually it has an awful lot to do with protecting us and our future.

Healthy forests ensure a good water supply, stabilize the soil, provide a range of potential products that we can’t cultivate and even help to clean the air.

A Philippine Eagle at the Philippine Eagle Center, Malagos, Davao, Mindanao, Philippines.

Similarly, healthy coastal mangroves and coral reefs aren’t good just for tourists and biologists: they also help to protect the coast from storms and provide breeding, feeding and growing grounds for a huge array of fish and other seafood that sustain hundreds of coastal communities.

So the health of these natural environments is critical to supporting a stable and healthy human economy. And if anyone living in a big city thinks they’re isolated from all this, then they should think again.

I myself have seen a glacier in Iceland retreat nearly a kilometer in just 10 years

If these natural systems were to break down, everyone would soon be faced with food shortages, escalating prices and a flood of desperate rural and coastal poor streaming into the cities.

So, like I say, a healthy natural environment is absolutely critical to a healthy and developing human economy. That’s progress.

You’ve seen nature up close, over many years. Any message to climate change deniers out there?

I’m never quite sure who the climate change deniers are, or what they’re thinking. Are they so cocooned in their air-conditioned urban offices that they are completely blind to what’s happening?

All you have to do is get outside, preferably into the countryside and watch developments over a period of a few years.

I myself have seen a glacier in Iceland retreat nearly a kilometer in just 10 years. In the UK, the British government is already having to spend millions on improving coastal defences to protect seaside towns and harbors (including my home town) from the rising waters and increasingly severe winter storms.

When I’m in the Philippines and need to step out of the madness for a while, I would like to head back to Camiguin

The recent Australian forest fires are an indication of increasingly extreme natural events. It is true that these days everything is massively reported in minute detail, so it can seem as if we’re constantly on the brink of total catastrophe, but even allowing for that there is an inexorable trend towards increasing global problems.

It is a process that is quite clear to anyone who cares to take the time and effort to look.

Which is your favorite place in the Philippines? To put it another way: Where would you most want to just chill for a few days, and why?

I’m not sure I should answer that question – some places should be kept a secret! However, when I’m in the Philippines and need to step out of the madness for a while, I would like to head back to Camiguin. I’ve not been there for a while now, it’s true, but on those occasions when I have found myself on the island it has always been a wholly joyous occasion.

The volcanic landscape is magnificent, and it is a lush, intensely green island. The people are hugely friendly and very relaxed and relaxing to be around. And with almost all its beaches black volcanic sand, I can be reasonably sure that it’ll never turn into a Boracay!

Wild Philippines, written and photographed by Nigel Hicks, is published by John Beaufoy Publishing, a publisher based in Oxford, UK. The book is available worldwide through all good book shops and online through any Amazon website. In the Philippines it can be bought from most branches of National Book Stores.

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