Philippine Archipelago Nature Nonprofits

The Philippines is seven thousand islands, and islands make species. Isolation, repeated across an archipelago, has produced one of the highest rates of endemism anywhere on Earth: animals and plants found on one island and nowhere else, sometimes on one mountain and nowhere else. The Philippine eagle, one of the largest and most powerful raptors in the world, is the emblem, and there are very few of them left.

It is also one of the most threatened places on Earth, which is the other half of the biodiversity hotspot definition. The forests have been cut back to a fraction of their original extent, the reefs are damaged by blast fishing and sedimentation, and the country sits directly in the path of typhoons that arrive stronger and more often. Few nations are more exposed to climate change.

The organizations here protect the last lowland forest, which is the rarest and most valuable, run marine protected areas managed by the fishing communities themselves, and defend the eagle. They work with limited resources against enormous pressure, and their persistence is remarkable.