Mounts Iglit-Baco Natural Park

A remote mountain wilderness in the Philippines shelters one of the world's rarest large mammals and the Indigenous communities who have protected its landscape for generations.

Support Conservation in Mounts Iglit-Baco

The last stronghold of the Tamaraw, a wild buffalo found nowhere else on Earth.

Mounts Iglit-Baco Natural Park sits at the heart of Mindoro Island in the Philippines, part of the Philippines Biodiversity Hotspot and home to multiple Key Biodiversity Areas. The park was first established as a protected area in 1970 and redeclared a natural park by the Philippine government in 2018, with a mandate to protect its biodiversity and develop a comprehensive conservation management plan.

The park's most iconic resident is the Critically Endangered Tamaraw, a dwarf wild buffalo found only on Mindoro. Around 500 individuals live within the park's boundaries, representing roughly 80% of the world's entire population. But the Tamaraw has been reduced to four isolated populations across the island, making genetic rescue and conservation breeding critical to the species' long-term survival.

The Tamaraw's survival is inseparable from the future of the people who share its land.

Mounts Iglit-Baco overlaps with the ancestral territories of the Buhid and Tau-Buid peoples, two of the eight ethnolinguistic groups of Mindoro Island. The culture, rights, and livelihoods of these Indigenous communities are woven into the landscape the Tamaraw depends on. Conservation here does not work around Indigenous peoples. It works with them, and the long-term success of the Tamaraw depends on that relationship being genuine and reciprocal.

Expanding protection

In 2024, Re:wild secured over $5 million in funding from the UK Darwin Initiative and launched a five-year collaboration focused on Indigenous-led land management and restoration, strengthened wildlife crime prevention, and policy development across the entire Tamaraw range. The program works in collaboration with the Indigenous Taobuid and Alangan communities, the D'Aboville Foundation, and the Mindoro Biodiversity Conservation Foundation to expand the co-management model established at Mounts Iglit-Baco to all four Tamaraw population areas.

This includes supporting the Tau-Buid's formal recognition of their ancestral domain, integrating Indigenous rights with the park's conservation goals, and training and equipping rangers drawn from local communities. Re:wild is also increasing understanding of Tamaraw hunting pressures, building local capacity in wildlife crime prevention, and improving data collection and patrol effectiveness across the range.

Learn More About Tamaraw

Beyond Tamaraw

The Critically Endangered Mindoro Bleeding-heart Pigeon survives here, with fewer than 250 individuals left after decades of deforestation. The Endangered Mindoro Imperial-pigeon, with no more than 2,500 individuals remaining worldwide, still holds on in the park. The Vulnerable Oliver's Warty Pig, found only on Mindoro, shares its grassland and forest habitat with the Tamaraw and the Indigenous communities who have lived alongside both for generations. Two bat species, the Mindoro Pallid Flying Fox and the Mindoro Stripe-faced Fruit Bat, were only discovered by science in 2007 and 2008 and are already Endangered.

And then there is the Ilin Island Cloudrunner, one of Re:wild's Top 25 most wanted lost species. Known from a single individual found on the small island of Ilin, just off Mindoro's coast, in 1953, the species has not been confirmed since. Unverified sightings in the lowland forests around the park have not been ruled out. It may still be there.

Learn About The Search for Lost Species