Tags: Zoos and Animal Sanctuaries
By Anna Valmero
LAPU LAPU CITY, CEBU – Hundreds of thousands of migratory shore birds found in Olango Islands makes this place synonymous to bird watching.
The Olango Islands Wildlife Sanctuary offers shelter to wintering birds and other marine life owing to its extensive mangrove ecosystem, coralline sand flats, sea-grass beds and offshore coral reefs. Aside from Olango, six other islets namely, Sulpa, Gilutongan, Nalusuan, Caohagan, Pangan-an, and Camungi comprise the island group, which has a total land area of 1,030 hectares.
Presidential Decree 903, issued by former president Corazon Aquino declared Olango Island a wildlife sanctuary, which contributed to the conservation of the area and its ecosystem that paved the way for wildlife to thrive in the area. Eventually, it was included in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance on July 1, 1994.
Tourists and bird-watching enthusiasts usually visit the wildlife sanctuary from July to November when the islands are teeming with nearly a hundred species of birds, a mix of migratory and native species.
This is because the Philippines is part of the East-Asian flyway, dubbed as one of the most important migratory flyways followed by birds migrating from Siberia, Northern China, Japan and other parts of Northern Asia during winter. Olango Islands serve as one of their stopovers and “refueling” station to migrate to New Zealand and Australia and then back to the Northern Hemisphere.
Photographer Chito was able to take pictures of the common tern (rarely seen in the country), godwits, dowitchers, curlews, plovers, sandpipers, Black-tailed Godwit, Great Know and Red Knot. (See more of his photos here.)
Meanwhile, Nilo Arribas, Jr. documented 32 bird species, including the rare green-legged Chinese Egret during his bird trip to Olango Islands in October 2004.
“The good thing about Olango is the vast flat area for birds to feed during low tide. This also offers local people the opportunity of gathering shells and crustaceans which sometimes lead them to the sanctuary,” he says.
“The tidal flats actually extend even to areas no longer part of the sanctuary and neighboring mangrove islets. Since birds don’t recognize administrative boundaries, ensuring the birds safety in this area is indeed a difficult task,” he says in this report for Birdwatch.ph.
How to get to Olango Island:
From SM Cebu, take a jeepney bound for Lapu-Lapu. Take a tricycle going to barangay Dapdap or Angasil. Get off at Portofino Beach Resort and take a pump boat for Santa Rosa Wharf in Olango Island. You can reach Olango Island by foot or a short tricycle ride.
Photos by Alain Pascua and slr2006 via Flickr
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