Two months ago, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) declared Barangay Pinol a protected sanctuary for the rare bats numbering some 186,000.
The giant golden crowned flying fox has large eyes as well as dog-like face, ears and nose. It is 29 centimeters long and weighs about 510 grams.
The bats are roosting on a private seven-hectare land owned by Pinol barangay chairman Lamia Mala and a certain Shaika Datu.
They were originally sighted in 1988 in the mountainous parts of Barangay Kalubi in Palembang, Sultan Kudarat. But disturbed by heavy kaingin (slash-and-burn farming), the bats left Kalubi and found refuge in Pinol.
Lucresia Magulong, 43, who claimed to live in Barangay Pinol, said the population of the rare bats is being decimated by food and pulutan hunters.
"They are hunting the bats for food or pulutan. We are afraid that the bats will leave our barangay," she said in Tagalog.
Engineer Estelita Corpuz, of the DENR’s Protected Areas and Wildlife Division (PAWD), said the Pinol residents’ fears were triggered when military men assigned in the barangay, hunted the bats for food but were stopped by village officials.
"There is a possibility that the bats will leave the area if other people will continue to disturb them. The bats are the country’s treasures. (We) should learn to preserve and protect them," she said.
Although the bats’ roosting site was declared a protected sanctuary, Corpuz said there is still a need to legally declare it a "critical habitat" to ensure the bats’ preservation and protection.
Corpuz said the DENR could not make such a declaration because the implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act 9147, or the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, have not yet been released.
Jim Sampulna, DENR-Central Mindanao director, has instructed the regional technical director for protected areas and wildlife and coastal zone management to meet with the officials of Pinol and Maitum town for the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA) for the protection of the bats against food hunters.
"I think the best option for the meantime is the forging of a MOA among the concerned parties while waiting for the release of the implementing rules and regulations of RA 9147," said Sampulna, who took over as regional DENR director last December.