One-man-desperate effort to protect Palawan endemic Hardwood Species from extinction
This all started when A Finnish environmental planner and scientist set out to the Philippines on a desperate one-man effort to protect something nobody seemed to be interested in:
The most valuable Philippine endemic hardwood species.
With decades of excessive exploitation, due to their extreme durability, strength and beauty, unknown amounts of these rare hardwoods remain. Since 1960s most of the forest cover in general has been lost.
Remaining forests are mostly “stripped off” from the valuable species and illegal logging is common treat even after total logging bans set by the Philippine government in 1990s.
These species, in Palawan Island only, include 2 Ebony trees “The Black Beauty”, the Philippine national tree Narra, very durable Ipil (Merbau), “Stronger than Steel” Ironwood (Mangkono) & Malabayabas + 20 other even more unknown species.
After learning about the strength and durability of these species, I wanted to personally see these trees. That proved out to be very hard, as most people do not even recognize these species.
So, I had to arrange a scouting survey to find out how many are actually remaining. Only rumors were heard about the possible locations.
Luckily enough I found some scattered great individual trees and very few small areas with significant amounts of these species in natural stand!
Unfortunately, these small areas are under immense treat of immediate illegal logging, as you can see in the home page...
This inspired the founding of Saving the Wonder Trees (SAWE) Inc. a Non-Profit Organization to Save, Protect, Propagate, Research and Educate about the most valuable Philippine endemic Hardwood Species.
We are now working to raise funds to save these hardwood species and start propagating them back to all Philippine islands that have already been stripped off their majesty.
We just need your help to do it! Please help us before it’s too late…
This far it has been a one-man-desperate-effort to: organize, pay all the expenses from my own pocket... and do the survey, sweat in the jungle, get my hands dirty & get evidence enough to get something started, establish the SAWE (yes, I payed also all these needed expenses from my own poor pockets... and I sure ain't rich...).
Then start these webpages, DO the webpages all alone. This is because I WANT to do this and I will work hard to plant millions of hardwood seedlings with my own hands!
Now we must all work together to make this a thousand-people effort. I just CANNOT DO MORE alone, please help any way you can. Without immediate intervention, strong support and money these trees are gone for sure...
We will be opening our first fundraiser campaign in November, follow us on our pages, Facebook and Twitter to volunteer or contribute.
We need at least 10 000€ in total to protect the first and the most important 5 hectares of Ironwood, Malabayabas and Dungon, the hardest & heaviest trees in the Philippines (and among the most critically endangered). This is just 3 334 of us chipping in 3€ each. Please help us before it’s too late…
With best regards,
Saving the Wonder Trees (SAWE) Inc.
Founder, Mr. Lauri M. Oikarinen
Monday, October 23, 2017
Proudly presenting
Bulong-ita “The Black Beauty” – the other Ebony Tree of the Philippines
Diospyros pilosanthera
P.S. All the photos of the trees we will post on any of our pages are from our own surveys and were still standing on the last note.
We can only hope that your help and donations arrive in time before they will be also cut down by illegal loggers...
The first photo represents one of the greatest Ironwood!
The second photo is the greatest Sakat seen for long time!
And the last one is a HUGE Bulong-ita "Black Beauty"!