Some thoughts on Aging, Birdwatching and Greenspaces for the Working People
By Leni Sutcliffe

Just to stir up the pot a little, I'd like to cite the example of Balesin, which we visited recently. This island of more than 400 hectares is partly a resort (complete with a golf course and a runway for six-seater or four-seater planes), partly a barrio of fishermen and their families, partly rocky headland, partly grassland, but mainly a low forest interspersed with tall native trees like the buro-buro, antipolo, talisay, balete.

Most of the island is owned by a corporation. It has a policy that has the effect of restricting population growth (men who marry non-islanders may bring their wives and raise their families on the island, women who marry non-islanders must live with their husbands outside the island - a bad case perhaps of gender descrimination, but that, it seems, is the way it is there). The wild birds are left mostly alone, but I am sure that if the local folk had their way, the birds and their habitat would have been wiped out long ago.

As it is, the birds are obviously not afraid of the humans around: a brown hawk-owl roosts in the talisay tree in front of the kitchen. Three imperial pied pigeons, a dollarbird, several coletos, numerous orioles, a blue-rock thrush, many white-breasted white swallows claim the trees around the resort cottages as their playground and their home. The flowering trees next to the restaurant are full of the usual insect-eating, nectar-loving small birds. One does not even need to edge closer to the trees to see them. There is the slightest trace of a trail in the forest, which rings with bird calls. I am certain that if we had spent more time there we would have seen more than the oriental cuckoo and the green imperial pigeon nesting there.

The resort is definitely not a popular destination. Long may it stay that way. We understand from the ground manager that they want to promote it as a place for eco-tourism. We suggested that they leave the forest trail as it was, that there was no need to create a more defined path, and that perhaps all that was required was a touch of paint on the trees along the trail to keep the tourist to the straight and narrow. I promised to try to get the ground manager a copy of Kennedy's guide if he could get his bosses interested in promoting birdwatching (as well as tree watching).

My point is: would the island have kept its wildlife if it had been left to the barrio folk to manage? The children are discouraged by the resort from using birds for target practice.There is no slash-and-burn farming on the island, and charcoal making is confined to isolated spots along the beach.

And oh yes, it is a perfect place for senior citizens to go birdwatching in. One can do that in front of one's cottage, or at the restaurant veranda. Even the forest is friendly - its highest spot is a small rise one is not likely to notice. The mangrove area is moist but firm land, and the mosquitoes are not too ferocious.

Like many in the Club I would like nature to be left alone. (I have dreams of buying large tracts of land for the sole purpose of keeping them wild, but alas not the wherewithal.) But where the alternative is total environmental degradation (and it often is), then perhaps enlightened eco-tourism is one way of preventing that from happening.

I for one am fortunate to have seen the fireflies rising to meet the stars in Balesin and am happy that the resort has been managed in the way it has to make that possible.