Sierra Madre Septentrional

Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park was created in 1997 in the province of Isabela, in north-eastern Luzon, and at some 3,597 km² it is the largest protected area in the Philippines. It extends along the eastern flank of the Sierra Madre, the range that runs down the east of the island and takes the full force of the Pacific typhoons.

Its importance lies in its preserving the largest continuous area of lowland rainforest left in the archipelago. The Philippines has lost practically all of that ecosystem, the richest and the most accessible, and what survives here does so largely because of the ruggedness of the terrain and the absence of roads on the coastal side.

The park holds a very high proportion of the endemic Philippine fauna: the Philippine eagle, of which only a few hundred pairs remain in the whole country, the Luzon hornbill, the Philippine sambar and the Philippine crocodile, one of the most threatened crocodilians in the world. Agta communities live in and around its territory, a hunter-gatherer people of the Negrito group, whose ancestral rights over the territory overlap with the protected designation. Illegal logging, mining and the opening of access routes are the main threats.