Mounts Iglit-Baco

Mounts Iglit-Baco Natural Park was created in 1970 on the island of Mindoro, between the provinces of Occidental and Oriental Mindoro, and protects some 753 km² of upland grassland, montane forest and dipterocarp forest.

Its raison d'être is a single species: the tamaraw, a dwarf buffalo endemic to Mindoro and the largest native land mammal in the Philippines. At the beginning of the twentieth century they numbered in the tens of thousands; hunting, the conversion of their habitat to pasture and a rinderpest epidemic transmitted by domestic cattle reduced them to a few hundred. This park holds the largest and practically the only viable population left, concentrated in a small sector of the protected area.

The annual tamaraw counts, carried out by simultaneous observation from fixed points, are one of the country's longest-running wildlife monitoring exercises. Conservation faces an underlying problem: the grasslands where the tamaraw grazes are kept open by the traditional burning of the indigenous Taubuid and Buhid communities, who have lived in the area since before it was declared and whose rights and practices must be reconciled with protection. The park is recognised as an ASEAN Heritage Park.