National Biodiversity Conservation Priority - Setting Workshop

Then, a meeting with Fr. Peter Walpole of ESSC was called to discuss the needed information for
the improvement of the data maps. He likewise emphasized that early submission could facilitate
the validation of the references. Letty Afuang ensured that ESSC should receive the data even
before the workshop ends (Annex 11). After the meeting, a very smooth and relieving night of
socials started. Others stayed on till some wee hours of the new day but others preferred to
sleep to cover up the early and stressful flight they took to come over on time for the whole day's
work.
b) DAY 2 (August 31,2000)
Prof. Letty Afuang started the day with guidelines for the day's activities all listed in the day's
program. The morning session started with the small working groups in their respective themes
to discuss, validate and plot existing data on the map. Although having different approaches,
each working group leader competently directed each one's contribution. The plant group was
evidently the most active because of the presence of several energetic experts in the person of
Vic Amoroso, Edwino Fernando and Dan, Lagunzad; ten members worked together to make a
very rich map update and species distribution for the plants.
In comparison to the Visayas Consultation, the Arthropods group had a better work condition in
Mindanao because Dr. Gapud finally found company to work with, in the person of Gloria
Camarao (LIPMin), Myrna Ballentes (CMU) and Alma Mohagan (CMU). Also, these participants
carried information that they can tinker with and put into the map. The group agreed upon on
which are the most important families of arthropods that could practically be used for the priority
setting.
Similarly, Ms. Lenie Borja was happy for having members to the freshwater group. What more
will she ask for, after having the list of all the significant rivers, swamps, marshes and lakes of
Mindanao. Their target now is to validate the presence of these freshwater systems in the maps
and find the reasons why they will be considered for prioritization.
In the Socio-econ group, Dr. Rowie Boquiren outlined the working group process, how each
regional consultation shall be used for the national priority setting, and how each participant's
effort contributes to the final results of the process. Having understood these, the members of
her group were able to identify additional participants and contributors of information. In fact,
she extended her stay until Saturday to conduct a meeting with socio-econ groups in Davao City
for this information sharing. All hats to her dedicated and highly motivated leadership for the
socio-econ aspect of priority setting; a tough job because this theme is the only cross-cutter that
interweaves biodiversity directly with human interventions in a multidimensional manner. They
have to be able to simplify their approaches for evaluating human impacts to conditions of
biodiversity.
Dr. Perry Aliiio led the discussions of the marine group, focusing on data sources and other
projects in relation to marine biogeographic zones. They also identified threats and scoring
systems in relation to threat types, as they affected Marine Protected Areas.
The united efforts of the Herps, Birds and Mammals made work productive and easy for the
Vertebrates group. As pointed out by Blas Tabaranza Jr., these three groups are generally
separated by the taxa that they cover but field works do not necessarily work that way. In the
field, the vertebrate wildlife specialists work together as one, or even one working on the three
groups, and gathering standard sets of information for a given undertaking and effective
analysis. Only when one works on the systematics of the species that they get into specialized