My Brief Account of a Summer in Kingfisher Park
After an almost chance meeting with Micha Reyes at a Christmas party, I had the distinct
honor of being invited by Dr. Manny Reyes to visit Kingfisher Park this past summer, evaluating the park
with the eyes of a biological materials science student interested in natural products research and the
kinds of benefits that the world can derive from biomimicry studies. Dr. Reyes worked closely with me
over the Spring to plan out my stay in the park, and I am indebted to him and his family for the level of
investment they made in the project. The experience began on June 22nd, after a brief conversation in
the airport before we boarded our respective flights to Manila, and I entered what would turn out to be
almost a month and a half of constant surprises, challenges, and eureka moments out in the jungle
wilderness of a beautiful haven of biodiversity.
My primary interest in the park centered on the potential for future scholarly activity,
particularly scientific research, within Kingfisher Park, though as I would find, the park itself is suited for
the engagement of any number of different projects. During my time, I focused on the accessibility and
quality of possible floral and faunal research, the potential for engineering students interested in the
field of biomimicry, the likelihood of valuable ethnopharmacological research, and also the ability for
those in development studies to make an impact in the communities around the park. During my stay, I
went to many different places within the park, documenting various interesting wildlife specimens,
talked to a number of the local residents, making notes of stories and history, and spent time
researching and considering how future research students could best develop their projects at KP.
Along with Lorenzo, my very capable guide, I ventured back into the forests several times on the
lookout for plant and animal species that popped up in conversations. From the animal kingdom, we
saw countless species of birds, kingfishers, parrots, and more, several different lizards and snakes, and
each time we ventured back up into the Virgin Forest, saw the macaques running from us in the
branches. One of our targets, a freshwater seahorse that was said to live about 5km up the river, was
never found, though we attributed its absence to recent flooding in the area. I also kept my eyes peeled
for reticulated pythons and the local spitting cobra species, though the only snake I saw during my stay
was a crushed python in the road. Being a bit of a herpetology nut, I asked constantly about the
pythons, and Lorenzo’s father stated that, off the shore of the main island, on one of the small islands
that I had seen previously, massive snakes still lived in abundance which, from his description of the
three color variations, are most likely reticulated pythons, the longest species of snake in the world.
Many times in the evening, I would leave the house to sit in a tree or on a trail and wait for
several hours, watching for some of the local night life, particularly the species of wildcat of which I had
been told, or perhaps the owls and bats, which I saw many times. Walking along the many trails back
into the center of the park, phosphorescent fungi, growing in tree stumps and on rotting wood, cast a
beautiful and haunting glow. Whenever I ventured into the forests at night I was overcome by the
amount of life around me. The environment at KP is highly diverse, ranging from mangrove forest and
freshwater streams and lakes to candlestick virgin forest, and offers a number of opportunities to
students and researchers in the biological and zoological sciences that simply would not be possible
elsewhere. It is entirely possible that new and interesting species are residing in the park, unknown and
unstudied, and as Kingfisher Park grows and develops its resources for scholars, the potential for
discovery there will be vast.
Returning from a day in the field.
Lorenzo and I searched for medicinal plants several times when we would go out along the
trails, finding some in the yards of locals, and many out in the middle of the jungle. With each new
example, I took photos, wrote down names, and questioned the uses of the specimens. There were
white leaves that were useful for cold sores and the many pus-filled wounds on my legs, there were
plants that worked to clot the blood when applied to an open wound, and once, when we were climbing
the Lunes Santo Mountain, Lorenzo cut a piece of bark from the tree at navel height that would serve as
a cure for stomach problems, something that worked to great effect when next I was hit by a digestive
sickness. But, of course, in only a month and a half, we barely scratched the surface of the par’s
potential; there are many more plant species with significant use in local medicine that would be of
extreme interest to ethnopharmacological researchers, and with the unequaled helpfulness of the
guides, field collection and plant screening would be very viable.
Furthermore, the efforts of Dr. Reyes to connect Kingfisher Park to biodiversity conservation
organizations in the Philippines, including the Katala Foundation and the Philippine Biodiversity
Conservation Programme, have given the park very positive opportunities to engage work in
conservation and development. In order to become the first privately owned biodiversity preserve in the
Philippines, it is essential that the information, educational, and resource infrastructure of the park be
addressed, and any motivated student interested in development studies would be rewarded with
several challenging opportunities for involvement at Kingfisher Park, from environmental education in
schools to development of alternative employment options through responsible eco-tourism within the
park itself. The park staff and coordinators are more than willing to have input on the infrastructural
developments, and such an effort would be an excellent focus for a field project.
All in all, the opportunity to visit Kingfisher Park was a blessing and I am very much looking
forward to where the park progresses from here. Having some experience with the resources located at
the park and the possibilities for scholarly activity there, I am interested in helping student to develop
their own projects utilizing the biodiversity and community at KP. Before leaving the park, I had an
opportunity to discuss the future with Dr. Reyes, and we are both very excited about investing the
environmental resources of the preserve in valuable research as a way to promote conservation and to
spread environmental consciousness throughout the area. I am looking forward to returning to KP,
possibly to conduct a field collection for a medicinal plant screening with a graduate student from the
University of Santo Tomas in Manila and to engage in a python expedition with a colleague from NC
State, and am advising other students in drafting research proposals for internship at Kingfisher Park
under programs like the Fulbright.
Garik Sadovy is a Materials Science Engineering student at North Carolina State University where he is also a Park Scholar co
2012. His research interests have been varied, from working on bio-nanomaterial solutions to cancer drug delivery systems and
viral engineering to field genetic surveys on the fisher cat and construction of devices that would lower the cost of small
mammal monitoring studies. He is currently studying in Indonesia as a Boren and Udall scholar, developing his language skills
and researching the enforcement of environmental conservation mandates in country.