Sa ngalan ng Sierra Madre
Well, Howard's Sierra Madre is a Pacific Ocean away from ours here in the Philippines. Yet even if I'm no gold digger, I share the same sentiments.
I joined WildHub because of the opportunities it presents for my personal and project advancement in the field of conservation. I lead the UP Mountaineers' Sierra Madre Nature Trail project which hopes to engage the local indigenous people's communities in protecting their ancestral domains and the country's last great forest through capacity-building programs centered on ecosystem services. It was the grant writing course that hooked me at first (through links from the Conservation Leadership Programme), but I do agree that to be a wildlife conservation professional, I need to employ a holistic approach and master every aspect needed to successfully navigate the vagaries of conservation projects.
I’m a field-based conservationist and institutional founder working at the intersection of ecology, governance, and knowledge systems in the Philippines.
For over 15 years, my work has involved biodiversity research, trail and landscape exploration, community-integrated conservation, and long-term engagement with Indigenous Peoples and local governments. I’ve worked on species rediscovery, reforestation and carbon forestry, conservation field surveys, and governance-oriented mountain initiatives across Luzon and Mindoro. At present, I lead the Mindoro Warty Pig Conservation Project, consult as a Reforestation Manager for the SJDM Carbon Forest, and conduct ongoing studies on a number of species, namely the Mindoro Hawk-Owl, the Mindoro Bleeding-heart Pigeon, and the Sierra Madre Aquatic Skink.
On top of these, I make sure that my work remains focused in answering a broader question: how societies recognize, translate, and govern ecological reality in biodiversity-rich but institutionally fragmented contexts.
In 2024, I co-founded the Sierra Madre Conservation Society (SierraPH), where I initiated four interlinked programs:
• Found Nation, a counter-archive for forgotten and long-undocumented species
• The Sierra Madre Trail Program, a governance-first framework for ethical movement through mountains
• SierraCon, a knowledge summit connecting science, society, and climate resilience
• The League of Indigenous Peoples Innovators (LIPI), an institutional incubation platform for Indigenous-led governance innovation
Increasingly, my work explores how cultural memory, art, and ethics shape which species are seen, remembered, or forgotten and how these forces influence conservation priorities and public understanding.
Across these efforts, my focus is on building durable structures that allow ecological knowledge, Indigenous authority, and conservation practice to endure beyond individual projects, personalities, or funding cycles.
