Calauit Island is an island of the
Calamian Archipelago, just off the north-western coast of
Busuanga Island. It is part of the municipality of
Busuanga in the province of
Palawan
Palawan (, ), officially the Province of Palawan (; ), is an archipelagic province of the Philippines that is located in the region of Mimaropa. It is the largest province in the country in terms of total area of . The capital and largest c ...
,
Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
. The entire island was declared as a wildlife sanctuary and game preserve in 1977, now is a tourist attraction known as
Calauit Safari Park
Calauit Safari Park is a wildlife sanctuary in the Philippines which was originally created in 1976 as a game reserve featuring large African mammals, translocated there under the orders of President Ferdinand Marcos during his Martial Law under ...
.
The wild animals were imported from Africa in the 1970s. The imported animals include 20
giraffe
The giraffe is a large Fauna of Africa, African even-toed ungulate, hoofed mammal belonging to the genus ''Giraffa.'' It is the Largest mammals#Even-toed Ungulates (Artiodactyla), tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant on ...
s, dozens of
zebra
Zebras (, ) (subgenus ''Hippotigris'') are African equines with distinctive black-and-white striped coats. There are three living species: Grévy's zebra (''Equus grevyi''), the plains zebra (''E. quagga''), and the mountain zebra (''E. ...
and
antelope
The term antelope refers to numerous extant or recently extinct species of the ruminant artiodactyl family Bovidae that are indigenous to most of Africa, India, the Middle East, Central Asia, and a small area of Eastern Europe. Antelopes do ...
s. Philippine President
Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. (September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino lawyer, politician, dictator, and Kleptocracy, kleptocrat who served as the tenth president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled the c ...
forced the locals to move to
Halsey Island and ordered to clear the bamboo forests to make the place similar to the
savannah
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...
s of
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
. An estimated 254 families, mostly from the indigenous
Tagbanwa tribes, were evicted and relocated to the former leper colony of Halsey Island.
Today, the African animals continue to roam around the island and the number of animals is increasing. The animals have been inbreeding for four generations and may die off from the lack of diversity in their gene pool.
Displacement of indigenous peoples
In the 1970s, several families, including those from the indigenous Tagbanwa peoples, were evicted from Calauit Island to make way for the wild animals imported from Africa.
A United Nations report on human and indigenous rights noted how Tagbanwa families suffered relocation under stress and duress after the Marcos decree turned their
ancestral lands into a sanctuary for African animals.
The families were resettled on barren land, where the families often went hungry.
For decades, the families struggled to return to what the Tagbanwa's consider their ancestral home.
Tagbanwa families would build homes, which would be demolished by Philippine soldiers. Soldiers also barricaded water sources and built fences to keep out the indigenous community.
In 2001, members of the Tagbanwa community were jailed for trying to resettle on the island.
After Marcos was
deposed in a peaceful revolution, the Balik Calauit Movement was organized to help families reclaim their ancestral land. The movement also helps the indigenous communities demand their human rights.
See also
*
List of protected areas of the Philippines
A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
References
External links
Calauit Island , A Piece of Africa
Calamian Islands
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