'Malang' released back to Liguasan Marsh

NORTH COTABATO - Superstitious Christian and Moro folks believe Friday’s release of "Malang" into the vast Liguasan Marsh will appease the spirit of Raja Muda and bring them “good tidings” in return.

Malang, a freshwater crocodile (Crocodylus Mindorensis), was caught last month by fishermen at a portion of the 220,000-hectare Liguasan delta in Barangay Dungguan in M'lang town while they were harvesting wild Tilapias using a net.

Local officials, led by M'lang Mayor Joselito Piñol, and representatives of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the Philippine Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Center, set Malang free at a swamp that connects to the marsh at about 3:00 p.m.

There is an undying Moro folklore about an 18th century chieftain, Rajah Muda, who ruled Muslim enclaves in what are now chartered towns of Carmen, Pikit, Matalam, and Kabacan in North Cotabato, and Maguindanao's adjoining Pagalungan and Montawal municipalities, had reincarnated into a mystical white crocodile for him to continue protecting the vast delta from encroachment by outsiders.

Moro folks scattered in the marsh believe Rajah Muda is the "vicegerent," or ruler, of the Liguasan Marsh, the world’s largest in terms of surface area, and teems with endemic fish, reptile and bird species.

The marsh is also said to have huge deposits of natural gas. It forms part of a vast plain spreading through what is now Maguindanao, which means “people of the flooded plains,” depicting a relationship in the ecology of the delta and the lives of ethnic Maguindanaons, surviving largely on rice, root crops and freshwater fishes since time immemorial.

There is a barangay in Pikit named Rajah Muda, from whose royal lineage sprung the Sultan sa Namli, and, subsequently, the ancestors of the present-day Matalam family, and many other related clans in the Maguindanaon-Matabangen subgroup in Central Mindanao’s Raya (upstream) area.

According to contemporary Moro historians, so admired was Rajah Muda during his time for his strong advocacy for the protection of the Liguasan’s wildlife from unwise utilization, as gleaned from Quranic teachings, that he even disallowed fishermen that supplied the Spaniards with fishes from the marsh from getting close to its tributaries.

While the story that the Rajah had reincarnated as a magical white crocodile is doubtlessly pure superstition, many folks that dwells along the marsh believes in it firmly. Superstition is a taboo in Islam.

They even have stories of how military surveillance teams, during the height of the Moro uprising in the 1970s, failed to spot from the air, while aboard helicopters or small fixed-wing aircrafts, Moro rebels moving from one spot of the marsh to another using small boats.

The marsh has since been a sanctuary for Moro guerilla forces.

Former employees of the now defunct Southern Philippines Development Authority (SPDA) had also talked about how strong winds destroyed the Tilapia cages they built on a strategic spot in the marsh, as a public demonstration facility for captive fish culture, during a fine sunny day in 1979.

The SPDA employees said they believed they caught the ire of the "white crocodile" for not having sought permission to put up the project which aimed to educate marsh dwellers on Tilapia culture.

The fish cages were eventually rebuilt, but only after the SPDA employees overseeing the project sent a shaman, even if it was against Islamic principles, to offer something to the "unseen guardian" of the marsh and explain the government's objectives in putting up the demonstration facility. 

Even Piñol, who is now in his second term as mayor of Mlang, said he noticed something strange in the surroundings of the area where they set the 2.9-meter Malang free.

“There were many sets of footprints of smaller reptiles, perhaps smaller crocodiles, on the ground as if indicating they converged there, anticipating the return of a member of the clan, and then disappeared as we came close,” Piñol told reporters.

Piñol, a younger sibling of former North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, said, they did not have even a slight intention to keep Malang captive, or display the crocodile in a public zoo.

“Our LGU has been an active advocate of environmental protection,” he said.

Piñol said they decided to take custody of Malang and threatened its captors with fine and imprisonment when they demanded a P40,000 “finders’ fee” from the Mlang LGU.

"But we had to treat Malang first of dehydration and injuries before it was returned to the wild," the mayor pointed out.