The Power of Nostalgia at Masungi Georeserve

Trigger Warning: Gun violence

In the misty mountains of Rizal, Philippines, Masungi Georeserve thrives underneath Billie Dumaliang and her team of conservationists' passionate care.

When Billie’s father, Ben Dumaliang, a civil engineer, took Billie and her sister Ann to Rizal, where his next project was, the destruction of its landscape was already well on its way.

You couldn’t imagine it looking at the reserve now, with its landscape thickly carpeted with deep, lush greens, spikes of limestone cliffs shyly emerging, but Billie recalls the badly deforested landscape. “The land was destroyed by quarrying, land speculation and illegal logging. There were no trees, no animals. Just the sound of chainsaw all day.”

When she returned to Rizal years later, Billie noticed that some of the life and the beauty of the landscape had begun to return. And in it, she saw the chance of true restoration. ”When I returned to Rizal after graduating college, I saw that there were treasures that people would appreciate.”

And for Billie, they were treasures absolutely worth preserving for the people of the Philippines, despite an unforeseeable journey that would alter their lives But, at the beginning, restoring Masungi was a way for Billie and Ann to restore their “childhood playground.”

In 2015, Billie and Ann co-founded Masungi Georeserve, working to restore over 2,700 hectares of degraded forest.

The name Masungi comes from the Filipino word “masungki,” meaning “spiked,”—apropos of the spiky landscape due to its limestone formation. The carefully-designed low-impact trails throughout the area with the reserve’s iconic spiderweb-looking viewing decks called “sapot.”

“The trails follow the natural terrain of the landscape, allowing people to safely access points of interest,” Billie explains.

With “geotourism” as the guiding model, the georeserve’s innovations and biomimicry engineering provide an experience that’s not only safe and interesting but also sustainable. Other nature reserves in the nation are already following Masungi’s example.

In 2016, the two sisters secured 430 acres of land and met with Gina Lopez, an environmentalist and the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources at the time. She was impressed by the sisters’ efforts and asked them to restore other areas of Masungi to combat the frequent floods that Metropolitan Manila experiences.

“There were quarrying, land grabs, and unauthorised structures and establishments inside the watersheds around Metro Manila,” Billie recalls. The dangerous lack of forestation caused by corporate greed and government corruption results in constant devastating floods and temperature increases throughout Metro Manila as the country suffers some of the worst effects of climate change.

And the much-needed environmental policy changes are significantly hindered by another major obstacle—violence against environmental activists.

Hiding in its natural beauty is a shocking truth: the Phillippines is the most dangerous place in Asia for environmental activists.

“Three years ago, two of our rangers were shot by assailants—people involved with expanding private resorts in the watershed that we were trying to stop.”

Thankfully, the rangers have survived the attack. However, bullet holes on the walls of their station still remain. “It was a blatant, cowardly act from people willing to kill to get their way,” she says matter-of-factly.

Later, she discloses how the rangers who risk their lives every day are one of her biggest sources of strength— leaving me to speculate the sheer amount of terror she must have felt at the time of the incident.

This heavy past is just one of the many memories she carries with her each time she steps onto one of Masungi’s trails.

Billie says the visibility of Masungi has become their protection. “There are so many other environmental groups who need to be protected like us,” she says. There’s safety in numbers.

Aside from the very real threat of land-grabbers and other assailants, trekking the trails for fieldwork while attending to legal matters at night leaves her exhausted most days. “This job is not easy,” Billie chuckles. “I have an acupuncture appointment tomorrow,” she shares, listing out the ways she tries to care for herself and others.

I ask her what drives her forward despite the exhaustion. She answers, “Any kind of change-making requires radical optimism, and we must continue to nurture hope and resilience in the work we do. We only really lose when we stop trying.”

Therefore, Billie also believes in educating the Filipino audience to be radically optimistic. For her, this is the antidote to violence and ignorance toward environmental justice. “At Masungi, we create modules around watershed education and wildlife, train over a hundred teachers, run boot camps, and nurture youths to become ambassadors of the watershed,” she says. Geotourism has also helped bring the reserve to a global community of eco-conscious travellers.

However, for Billie, there’s a pride in educating and encouraging young people about the Philippines’ biodiversity. After all, the Philippines is one of the 17 megadiverse countries with some of the highest endemicity of animals across the world.

“When you learn, you love, and when you love, you protect.”

Through Masungi, Billie also works to reconnect people with the teeming Filipino nature they grew up with. “Modern Filipinos, no matter how detached they seem from nature, love these childhood memories of their interaction with nature,” she says.

“In my childhood, there were a lot of dragonflies and fireflies—the  indicators of clean air and water.” Evoking people’s childhood nostalgia for fireflies has helped them connect with their followers on social media, keeping them in the public eye. “We try to remind them of what life was like when we didn’t have this—the overdevelopment.”

Billie, too, loves her nostalgia. “My dad was one of the first people in the nineties to recognise Masungi as an important natural heritage to protect it,” she says.“He had strong morals, and he was courageous. My sister and I would joke that he’d always choose the most difficult path if it meant it was the right one.”

She now walks on her own path of hardships and uncertainties with Masungi. However, like her father, she firmly believes it to be the right one.

“There’s power in the memory of the past.”