Palawan underground river remains protected

Five tourist destinations in Palawan, including Puerto Princesa City’s famous underground river, remain protected areas and therefore closed to commercial exploitation.

They remain so because Congress has failed to pass the proposed E-NIPAS (Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas Systems) Law.

The version of the bill pending in the House proposes to remove the five tourist spots from the list of protected areas under Republic Act No. 7586, or the NIPAS Act of 1992.

Proposed to be delisted, aside from the Puerto Princesa City Subterranean River National Park, are the El Nido Managed Resource Protected Area, Malampaya Sound Protected Landscape and Seascape, Mt. Mantalingahan Protected Landscape and Rasa Island Wildlife Sanctuary.

Palawan Rep. Douglas Hagedorn said the subterranean river and El Nido are among the popular tourist destinations in Palawan.

He said he could not understand why Las Piñas Rep. Mark Villar wanted the five tourist destinations removed from the list of areas enjoying protection under the law against environment degradation resulting from commercial exploitation.

He said his timely intervention during the period of amendments on the E-NIPAS bill prevented the delisting of the five.

Hagedorn pointed out that far from protecting the five tourist spots in Palawan, the bill would open them to environmental destruction by removing them from the coverage of the NIPAS Law of 1992.

He said certain officials in the province, together with their businessmen-partners and congressmen-friends, are pushing for the delisting.

“They are particularly interested in Mt. Mantalingahan, which is believed to have lots of mineral deposits,” he said.

He recalled that in October, he discovered that the committee on natural resources and environment had retained El Nido, the subterranean river and the three other tourist destinations in the list of protected areas.

However, he said the committee secretariat, which is composed of House personnel, submitted a different report, which delisted the five protected areas.

“This shows you how influential are those pushing for this measure,” he said.

The E-NIPAS bill seeks to include more than 90 areas in Metro Manila and the provinces in the coverage of the 1992 law.

These areas include the Las Piñas swamps, which an influential businessman wants reclaimed and transformed into an airport.