MONGABAY.COM SAYS;

   The once spectacular primary forests of the Philippines are now a relic of a bygone era. What little primary forest does remain exists on the island of Palawan, the last sanctuary for the Palawan eagle. 

    Between 1990 and 2005 the Philippines lost a third of its forest cover. While the current deforestation rate is around 2 percent per year, this represents a 20 percent drop from the rate of the 1990s. 

    Widespread logging was responsible for much of the historical forest loss in the Philippines. Despite government bans on timber harvesting following severe flooding in the late 1980s and early 1990s, illegal logging continues today. Illicit wood cut from secondary and primary forests is routinely smuggled to other Asian countries. 

    After temporarily lifting the log export ban in the late 1990s, the government has increasingly tried to crack down on timber smuggling and forest degradation, but with limited success. Additional threats to Philippine forests come from legal and illegal mining operations—which also cause pollution— agricultural fires, collection of fuelwood, and rural population expansion. In recent years, deforestation has been increasingly blamed for soil erosion, river siltation, flooding, and drought; environmental awareness is now rising in the country. Activists are quick to criticize government decisions that adversely affect the country's environment. 

image from www.google.com/philippine rainforest

    With less and less forest in the Philippines, locals are increasingly reliant on plantations to meet their timber needs. As a result, plantation cover has fallen 65 percent between 1990 and 2005. 

    The continuing disappearance of Filipino wild lands is of great to concern to ecologists due to the high levels of endemic species. Of the 1,196 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles in the country, nearly 46 percent are endemic. Among plants, the number is around 40 percent. Only about 5 percent of the Philippines land area is under some form of protection. 



SOURCE: http://rainforests.mongabay.com/20philippines.htm