What Local People Think About Crocodiles: Challenging Environmental Policy Narratives in the Philippines

This article challenges several assumptions that have shaped environmental policy in the Philippines. Policy makers assume that people are antagonistic toward conserving crocodiles in the wild and think that the enforcement of environmental legislation in a context of widespread rural poverty is illegitimate and ineffective. They argue that these negative public attitudes can only be transformed by generating revenues for rural communities, for example, through crocodile ranching or ecotourism. Despite the evident failure to conserve crocodiles in the wild, this thinking continues to underpin policy and practice in the Philippines. A community-based conservation project in the northern Sierra Madre on Luzon puts this utilitarian logic in perspective. The project succeeded in transforming hostile attitudes toward crocodiles and mobilized broad societal support for the protection of the Philippine crocodile and its freshwater habitat. Cultural values, such as pride in the occurrence of this rare and iconic species, form an important incentive for people to support the preservation of the species in the wild. These experiences highlight the importance of moving beyond ideological positions in discussions on biodiversity conservation, and enable the design of integrative and innovative solutions to conserve wildlife in human-dominated landscapes.