Environmentalists are angry that birds are being “massacred” in Negros and bragged about on the Internet, but the hunters so far appear to be getting away with it with impunity.

“We hunted down the birds for the fun of it,” a Bacolod resident said.

The Bacoleño, who agreed to a DAILY STAR interview on condition that his identity be withheld, was among those featured in photos posted on the Internet with fellow hunters showing off the birds they shot down in Negros Occidental, which included endangered wild ducks.

He said the photo of him posted on the Internet with dead snipes, by fellow hunter Gino Castandielo, who said they were members of the Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club, was taken four years ago.

There is no Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club, we are just a loose group of people who hunt together for birds and the name was just placed there by the person who posted our pictures, he said.

The Bacoleño, who said he had long stopped hunting because his work schedule would no longer allow it, said he was angry with Castandielo for posting the photos on the Internet and demanded that he remove them.

In Bacolod , he said, he knows of about 20 hunters who use air rifles to shoot down birds and there are more from other parts of Negros Occidental.

Birds are usually hunted down in Pontevedra, Hinigaran, Ilog, Valladolid and Murcia towns, and Bago, Kabankalan and La Carlota City, he said.

When he was still an active hunter, he said he would go hunting early Sunday with his friends.

Hunting for birds has a lot of challenge, we camouflaged ourselves to go undetected and to get a good shot, he said.

I was not aware of the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act then that prohibits the shooting down of birds and many of my fellow hunters did not know about it, he said.

We ate our catch, we did not sell them, he said.

He insisted that they only shot down birds that are considered pests to farmers, when asked if he was aware of the biodiversity damage they were causing.

‘WILD DUCKS VULNERABLE'

The wild ducks (Philippine Mallard or Philippine Duck Anas luzonica) eat fingerlings in fishponds and tokmos (ground doves) and korokokoks (zebra doves) destroy crops, the hunter claimed.

A claim environmentalists in Negros dispute as they campaign for a wider awareness of the damage bird hunters are causing.

Pavel Hospodarsky, a volunteer consultant of the Biodiversity Conservation Center of the Negros Forest and Ecological Foundation Inc., said the wild ducks being shot down are endemic to the Philippines and classified as vulnerable, with only 5,000 to 10,000 birds left in the country.

And they, in fact, help farmers because they eat snails and worms that damage their crop, NFEFI chairman Gerry Ledesma said.

The ducks and other birds being shot down are symbiotic to the chain of life, Hospodarsky points out.

Losing any of them to extinction would be breaking a link in the chain of life not only of those birds but of all of us, said Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, author of Republic Act No. 9147 or the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, reacting to reports of bird massacre in Negros .

NO TANGIBLE RESULTS

Negros environmentalists are hoping that the grisly photos of massacred birds posted on the Internet by the so-called Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club would galvanize government action and public awareness to the continued blatant mindless damage to biodiversity.

But it has been more than a month since local and international environmentalists raised an outcry over the photographs showing the slaughtering of the birds that was discovered posted on the website of the Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club by Negrense Josef Sagemuller, and no tangible results to a government investigation were in place.

Sagemuller, who has been engaged in bird conservation work on Negros Island , said that while browsing Google for bird information, the Bacolod Air Rifle Hunting Club popped up.

GHASTLY WEBSITE

“My curiosity being piqued I decided to click the link and do some exploratory browsing with a bit of a heavy feeling in my stomach, but nothing could have prepared me for the ‘Quarry' and ‘Photos' section of this ghastly website. It was like being stabbed through the heart, hundreds of hundreds of massacred doves of all kinds, mallards, whistling ducks and snipes. It was unbelievable seeing all these.”

“One man in the pictures had more dead ducks around his neck than I have ever seen in the wild. This is a screaming injustice and decidedly illegal,” he said.

What is even more disconcerting is the fact that clubs such as these proliferate throughout the Philippines , from Albay to Isabela to Coron to Negros, Cebu and Mindanao , this is not just a local phenomenon, it's a national one, he said.

PROTESTS URGED

So Sagemuller decided to take action by campaigning over the Internet (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/revolting-local-bird-massacre) for the public to sign a petition “Stop this Philippine endemic bird massacre” to stir enough support to force government into action and “bring these criminals to justice”.

“By signing this petition we will show the media and the Philippine government that we will not tolerate the exploitation of our endemic wildlife by anyone and express our indignation at the slaughter of innocent animals for sport,” he said.

The Wild Bird Club of the Philippines in a petition in reaction to the photos posted on the Internet said “any form of sports hunting should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The group appealed to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and to the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau to demonstrate speedy and effective enforcement of the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act.

“These are crimes against the Filipino people and future generations in the global community who may never know these creatures being hunted to extinction,” it said.

But more than a month after the outcry over the bird massacre, Damaso Fuentes, chief of the Protected Areas and Wildlife section of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Western Visayas, Tuesday said he had directed the Negros Occidental Provincial Environment and Natural Resources office to act on the matter and was still awaiting a report.

PENRO Livino Duran said their initial investigation showed that the pictures of hunters with their slain bird catch were taken in Pontevedra town but they were still establishing where in the town and the identities of those involved.

Whether the culprits would ever be prosecuted remains vague.

THEY HUNT FOR SPORT

Ledesma, chair of the Negros Forest and Ecological Foundation Inc. that has been actively working for the preservation and regeneration of endangered species, said the air rifle hunters are the most difficult people to work with because they hunt for the sport and not for the need to eat.

And this is not true just in Negros , but in various parts of the country, too, he said.

A massive education campaign is needed to create public awareness against bird hunting to put pressure on these hunters to stop what they are doing, he said.

Some of them do not believe they are endangering anything and need to be convinced otherwise, he said.

Ledesma said he is hoping a provincial ordinance is passed in Negros Occidental banning air guns in the province.

Law enforcers should also be made aware of the prohibition to bird hunting contained in the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, he said.

The unabated sale of dead birds along the highway, sometimes near police outposts, is a telling sign, he said.

To create awareness Clint Alvior, NFEFI conservation education officer, said they have been conducting campaigns in schools and barangays on the importance of birds to our biodiversity, and of laws that prohibit their being killed.

“These poachers should be punished and the penalties to be slapped should be strong enough to stop these practices and serve as a warning to others,” Zubiri said.

“This is not just about conservation. It's about biodiversity, natural heritage, legacy and ecological balance,” Zubiri said.

Zubiri, who authored the wildlife act, said he will seek a review of the penalties to know whether they have been applied correctly.

In 2001, we approved a minimum five days imprisonment and P200 fine, and maximum imprisonment of eight years and P5 million pesos in fine, he said. The fines should have been increased by 10 percent every three years, he added.

But the country has a lot of very good laws, the problem is in the enforcement, Ma. Renee Lorica of the Fauna and Flora International – Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Program, said.*CPG

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