Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Priorities

The Philippines is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. It is among the world’s richest countries in biodiversity, but its biodiversity is threatened. The results shown here indicate the areas that must be conserved to thwart further loss of biodiversity.

One of the major contributions of the Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Priority-setting Program was the updating of the country’s biogeographic regions. Sixteen terrestrial and six marine biogeographic regions were identified. This consensus was based on recent information on the Philippine’s geologic and evolutionary history and experts’ opinion about the distribution patterns of various taxonomic groups. This effectively updated biogeographic zones previously identified by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 1997.

Each of the 16 terrestrial biogeographic regions, which is a separate island or island group that existed during the last Ice Age, supports a large number of unique species and is recognized as a center of biodiversity. The present Philippine Islands arcs surrounding the important basins in the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea, and the Pacific Ocean served as the physical framework for the marine biogeographic regions. The six marine biogeographic regions were identified with broad transition zones based on the affinities of the associated reef fish assemblages, the evolutionary geology of the archipelago, and the predominant ocean circulation patterns.