To attract local tourists, the park lowered its entrance fee to P100, but the staff still had to be streamlined. “Closed! The airport was closed, so we had zero tourism,” recalls Maclang. Counting batsĪnd then, COVID-19 happened. We would give P1 million each to the four barangays, and P500,000 to each ancestral domain.” By 2019, the park had some P100 million in savings. “We would allocate for the next year, including salaries. Because of the P500 entrance fee, “we were self-sustaining,” recounts Maclang. There were 304 employees, including a park biologist, marine biologist and cave management specialist trained by Italian scientists from the LaVenta Foundation. PSFI provided the barangays with basic infrastructure and supplies, safety training, and equipment.īefore the pandemic, the river was attracting as many as 1,200 people a day, wisely controlled by park management to minimize impact, despite a total capacity of 2,500.

By the time she joined the team in 2013, recruited from another environmental nongovernmental organization (NGO) by Puerto Princesa Mayor Lucilo Bayron, it was a thriving enterprise, and she was able to focus on community development and capacity building for local people’s organizations.Īs a result, visitors to the Underground River also had the option to go caving in the Hundred Caves in Tagabenit, paddle through mangroves in Sabang, or go snorkeling in Isla Filomena, for example.

The river actually started receiving visitors in the 1990s, but only about 50 people a day, since roads were rough and it was not yet properly marketed, Maclang reveals. These barangays are Tagabinet, Cabayugan, Panggangan and Marufinas, which also include a large population of the indigenous Tagbanua tribe, living in three ancestral domains. What few people realize, however, is that because of its expanded “influence,” as it were, the river, located on the northwestern end of Puerto Princesa City, is the flagship feature of an area that is home to four barangays and some 7,000 people. “My favorite part is the Cathedral”-she’s referring to a huge cavern with a high ceiling and what look like religious icons on the walls-”because it is still always amazing every time you see it.” “Nakakawala ng pagod (The tiredness disappears), no matter how many times you see it,” says Beth Maclang, the feisty protected area superintendent of the PPSRNP for the last nine years. An excellent audio tour now encourages a more respectful, reverent silence after all, the river is estimated to be between 15 and 20 million years old. Tiny bats and swiftlets fly around as the guides shine powerful lights on the karst, adding to the drama. It’s an otherworldly experience, as visitors on paddleboats are taken on 45-minute tours to view breathtaking stalactites and stalagmites, massive caverns and natural formations with names like the Candle and T-Rex.

Mind-boggling karst limestone formations surround an 8.2-kilometer stretch of brackish water that flows into the sea, covering a truly “mountain-to-sea” range of ecosystems. It doesn’t hurt that the river is, well, spectacular. 4 of that same year, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) inscribed the park on its list of natural World Heritage Sites, based on “superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance,” and for being home to “the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity.” It was also renamed the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (PPSRNP). 212 expanded the area to 22,202 ha, including the river’s catchment and neighboring important forests, deemed essential for biodiversity conservation. In 1992, park management was transferred to the Puerto Princesa city government and its own Protected Area Management Board (PAMB), under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Paul Subterranean Park by Presidential Proclamation No. The Puerto Princesa Underground River in Palawan has been a famous, formidable natural wonder and tourism destination for a long time, since 3,901 hectares of the area were named the St.

Princesa margarita