At the Philippine Eagle Center in Malagos, on the edge of Davao City, the Philippine Eagle Foundation spent 30 October celebrating its partners for Indigenous Peoples Month. They called the day Katutubo: Guardians of Ancestral Domains, under the theme Our Culture. Our Ancestral Lands. Our Future. Sixteen Indigenous communities were recognised for protecting the forests of their ancestral domains, among the last strongholds of the Philippine eagle, one of the largest eagles on Earth and the national bird since 1995. Two of them, the Higaonon Buhita and the Ata Manobo Talaingod, were given three dimensional landscape models of their own territories, so the people who know the land best can plan its future around a table, ridge by ridge and river by river.
Dr Jayson C. Ibañez, the foundation's director for operations, told the room how it began. Thirty years ago an elder in Bukidnon asked the conservationists a simple question: what about the people? From then on, the work was built around the answer. It now rests on three things, Dr Ibañez said: decisions made with the communities' own leaders, real support for the knowledge keepers, and benefits that reach every household. "Kayo po ang champion namin," he told the Indigenous representatives, you are our champions. Executive director Dennis Joseph I. Salvador traced the partnership back to 1995 and an ancestral domain with a long used eagle nest, protected by its people long before biodiversity became a buzzword. There is an Australian thread too. Australia Awards supported Dr Ibañez's studies here and a fellowship for ten Indigenous leaders. With Catholic Relief Services, communities are growing coffee among the forest trees, and country representative Jonas Tetangco put the whole idea in one line: "We believe that livelihood and caring for the environment should not be at the expense of one or the other."
Sources and links
Our short take: the full story is by SunStar Davao (1 November 2026), photographs by Gem Audrey C. Alicaya. Photographs: as credited in captions.
- SunStar Davao, PEF highlights indigenous leadership in forest conservation The event, the theme, the sixteen communities, the landscape models, every quote and name.
- Philippine Eagle Foundation The foundation's work and news.
