Indigenous Knowledge Of Bugkalots On Endemic Tree Species In Landingan, Nagtipunan Quirino

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Indigenous Knowledge Ð'- defined. Such knowledge has been accumulated from a long series of observations of natural phenomena and trial and error process of local people. It can also be acquired from long and patient observation and actual farm trials. Moreover, farmers are not often knowledgeable about the scientific background or explanation for the many cause and effect relationship among activities and outcomes of their production system. It is likely that they didn't know the concepts of ecological effects of genetic variations and species combination but they in fact, been applying these in their production system or farming practices.

Having undergone the slow process of formation, testing, modification and further verification over long periods of time, indigenous knowledge in agriculture have acquired strong scientific basis even the people themselves were not well versed with the scientific explanation of their practice or production system. Unlike in agriculture, forestry requires a much longer time for its productive activities to reach fruition. Hence, it is much more difficult for farmers to observe complete production cycles and draw inferences from the basis for generating indigenous or local forestry knowledge.

However, local forestry knowledge contributes significantly to people's welfare and survival and is therefore worthy of documentation and application. While other views forest as "unproductive" where useless animals and plants thrive, local people have been able to identify many different plants species which are capable of yielding various products for food, medicine, forage, fuel and others. The forest therefore is considered to be a storehouse upon which farmers can rely for food security when regular crops in the lowland farm fails. Similarly, active ingredients of widely used medicines to cure tropical diseases comes from different forest tree species that have long been known and used by the local farmers in traditional or folk medicines. Moreover, for the past decades tremendous pressures have been exerted on our natural resource base in order to satisfy basic needs. Gradually, our forest ecosystem is being converted to agriculture and human managed production system. Many of the activities related to agriculture intensification resulted to a much wider problem: the loss of biodiversity. This is indicated by the fact that our list of endangered species contains 18 entries. Another 25 are in the threatened list. Many of these plants and animals reside in rapidly disappearing forests and 50 percent of our endemic forest floras are already extinct (IRRR, 1993).

The loss of habitat as a result of forestland conversion resulted to a reduction in the area of natural vegetation. This means reduction in the population of species with a resulting loss to genetic diversity and an increase in vulnerability of species and population to diseases, hunting and random population changes. Overexploitation was also considered as one of the causes wherein exploitation of resources at an uncontrolled rate that cannot sustain the natural reproductive capacity of the population being harvested resulted to decline in population and worst to its extinction. Furthermore, the employment or used of monoculture based non-native or exotic species which have replaced the original species are responsible for the decline of certain plant and animal species due to predation, acquired diseases or competition.

The unexpected negative results of loss of biodiversity activated the interest of environmentalist in promoting diversity as means to avoid ecological catastrophe and ensure sustainable productivity. Biological surveys, inventories, and monitoring have been identified as initial step in order to enhance local scientific and technical expertise and to initiate sound conservation strategies. These activities can serve not only to tell us the status of biodiversity, but also to identify valuable biological resources, some of which are unknown, while others are locally known but have potential for much wider use.

According to Vergara (1998), in order to conserve biodiversity while supporting the basic needs of our people, management of our forest should promote the poly-cultural production systems, such as agro forestry, on farmers fields where different varieties of annual crops and native tree species (farm and plantations) highly preferred by farmers for productivity and value could be assured of conservations.

In most cases, people have no knowledge on propagation because species are just collected in a natural stand. In order to have better understanding of the species and access to ready publish information about the species would link local names and scientific names because local names vary from place to place. Hence, identification and taxonomic verification is necessary to ascertain which species if referred to. This would become a valuable input in researches specifically on tree breeding.

The documentation or identification of preferred and most frequently cultivated/used tree species will be of great help for it serves as basis for extension and technology transfer to ensure wider adoption of mixed cropping systems that guarantee the cultivation and ex-sito conservation of price genes and tree species. Furthermore, effective conservation of biological diversity requires more than just basic knowledge of its components we need to know the potential benefits that organisms can offer to humanity.

Local knowledge offers invaluable input to community based resource conservation. In the case of knowledge on indigenous tree species, it is very useful in influencing decisions particularly in the choice of species to be planted in reforestation sites and community based tree plantations. The above concerns justify the conduct of study on indigenous knowledge on endemic tree species in Landingan Nagtipunan, Quirino.

Statement of the Problem

The study sought to gather information regarding indigenous knowledge of Bugkalots on endemic tree species in Landingan Nagtipunan, Quirino.

Specifically, aimed to answer the following questions:

1. What is the profile of the members of the Bugkalot tribe who served as respondents of the study?

2. What native tree species are commonly found in the study site?

3. Which among the endemic tree species do local people use?

4. What are the particular uses of the identified native tree