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Cataag Compound, San Joaquin St., Ormoc City, Leyte, Philippines 6541
Tels. 63-053-255-3516 & 63-053-560-6441; Email: [email protected]

Lake Danao Community-based Conservation Project

The project started on October 2003 and ended September 2005. It aimed to undertake community-based activities for the protection and conservation of the biodiversity of the forest around Lake Danao through conscious community participation. This was in the context of worldwide efforts addressing environmental protection. The project site was within the Lake Danao National Park (2,193 hectares) and one of the three important watersheds of Ormoc City.

Moreover, the area was to serve as an outdoor living laboratory, which could help people understand their environment and give clues to ecological processes not yet fully understood. Viable and different ecosystems present would serve as a research area/field study especially in productivity, population dynamics and biological diversity. The project was expected to benefit at least 282 upland households.

As a biodiversity conservation effort, the project had to blend with the eight organizations then active in the village. Since ecotourism would bring in more people under a supervised eco-program, the chances of conservation was expected to improve. Likewise greater awareness of environmental issues in general and in the area in particular, participation of farmers in environmental activities and training is approximately at least 60 percent would haver been accomplished.

As it is, the physical survey of the lots occupied by settlers in the forested areas was not done due to the community's resistance. The people could not accept the tenurial instrument offered by the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources to them. What the latter wanted was to have titles to their claims in areas considered to be under the National Integrated Protected Areas Systems.

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