LOGGERS TURN TOUR GUIDES IN SAMAR
THE JOBS GENERATED BY SUSTAINABLE AND ETHICAL TOURISM ACTIVITIES ACT AS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SAFETY NETS FOR LOCALS WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE TURN TO ILLEGAL MEANS TO SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES.
We’re shooting through a wild, wild washing machine — paddling, cursing, laughing and getting absolutely drenched inside a torpedoshaped canoe.
We’re on the Ulot River, a 92-kilometer waterway which snakes its way across Samar. The third largest island in the Philippines, Samar is a rough country, hewn from limestone which over a millennia have been transformed into some of the most dramatic rock formations and cave systems in the Philippines, such as the Langun-Gobingob Complex.
Revenge tourism is a social phenomenon where people who have been stuck at home, often for months at a time, rush to tourist sites to appease their lockdown fatigue. With easing lockdown and flight restrictions, more and more tourist destinations are experiencing waves of visitors out to reexperience paradise — but what about the people who guide them? The people who themselves work in paradise?
“I used to help cut and transport logs illegally,” Epifanio “Panying” Obidos, our boat guide shares. “For generations, we used traditional torpedoshaped canoes called balugo to transport timber. We would get orders to cut down hardwood trees like banuyo, narra or kamagong. One balugo can transport over 100 board feet of wood.”
Samar is among the poorest provinces in the country. In 2015, the Philippine Statistics Authority revealed that 45 percent or nearly half of all families in Samar lived below the poverty line.
“The hardest part was that even when we’d risk run-ins with the law by transporting illegallycut timber, we’d still have barely enough cash to survive. Often, we’d borrow money from financiers to buy gas and other provisions to transport the logs they ordered. Even after getting paid, we’d still be in debt,” Panying recalls.
Things have steadily improved. Samar’s poverty incidence dropped to 30 percent by 2018, mostly because of small businesses, one of which is the Ulot River Torpedo Extreme Boat Adventure, where boats go bow-to-bow with raging rapids.
“In 2008, to veer away from illegal activities, we started using our torpedo-shaped balugo for tourism to showcase the natural beauty of Samar. We mostly employed locals who formerly worked as illegal loggers or log haulers,” Panying explains. “Back then we only had 12 people and a few old boats — but traversing rivers was a way of life for us, since we’ve been using them for transportation long before Samar’s road network was developed.”
“Now our once-small operation has over 20 boats and employs 70 local people,” Panying beams.
In 2018, their group, Tour Guides and Boat Operators for River Protection and Environmental Development Organization was recognized by the Department of Tourism for its responsible, communitybased operations.
The Ulot River is part of the Samar Island Natural Park (SINP), the country’s largest land-based Protected Area (PA).
“The Philippines hosts 247 PA and practically all of them give locals employment,”
Department of Environment and Natural Resources Biodiversity Management Bureau director Natividad Bernardino explains. The stories of many of these PA are similar to Panying’s — of loggers turned into tour guides, hunters turned into rangers, blast fishers transformed into dive guides.
“For all this to continue, there must be a steady stream of clients,” SINP superintendent Eires Mate points out. “The Covid-19 lockdowns hit the world’s PA hard, generating all-time visitor revenue lows. Many people were laid off and operations were drastically scaled-down. With our parks again open for business, we invite adventurers to visit the Ulot River and our country’s other beautiful PA.”
Launched in May 2022, the Year of the Protected Areas, or YOPA, aims not just to educate people on the need to conserve PA, but to encourage them to visit the sites themselves. YOPA hopes to generate funds from tourists to ensure continued management for areas hard-hit by Covid-19 budget cuts.
Declaring natural sites as PA is among the best ways to protect natural capital.
“The jobs generated by sustainable and ethical tourism activities act as economic and social safety nets for locals who might otherwise turn to illegal means to support their families,” United Nations Development Programme resident representative Selva Ramachandran says.
With illegal activities, nothing is certain — but with legal, safe and sustainable tourism, then there truly might be forever.
“You know, if not for ecotourism, I would most probably be dead,” Panying reflects, as we quietly glide back to shore. “The authorities would have definitely caught me, like they caught others. I might have starved to death, been shot by the cops or been hauled off to jail.”
“In a very real way, ecotourism saved my life.”