Going, going, gone? Two Philippine lizards near extinction

They are choice food and rare pets in the Philippines, and could soon become dead reptiles crawling - the equivalents of Sean Penn in the 1995 film, “Dead Man Walking," waiting for the end, not by lethal injection, but through direct extinction. The first “death row" candidate, the Panay monitor lizard (scientific name: Varanus mabitang) was recently added by the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on its list of threatened species. These lizards, commonly called “mabitang" that are endemic to Panay Island, sleep in tropical lowland rainforest trees and consume lots of fruits.

But on the tables of gourmands, mabitang becomes rare cuisine – its meat cooked into adobo or arroz caldo, its egg (that reportedly costs P200 each) fried, sprinkled with salt, and eaten with hot rice. According to the IUCN, the mabitang population has been continuously declining because of rampant hunting and the destruction of its habitat. Because of its severely fragmented environment, the movement of the species has been restricted to around 400 square kilometers of Panay’s primary forest. Meanwhile, in Pasay City’s Cartimar market where illegal wildlife trade remains unrestrained, another threatened reptile – the sailfin water lizard (Hydrosaurus pustulatus), endemic throughout the country except Palawan, is being sold for as low as P150 to as high as P10,000. Known as the “Philippine iguana," the docile reptile that loves swimming, has been classified as vulnerable by the IUCN because its population has declined by 30 percent in the last decade. And the mortality rate is sure to get worse. A Cartimar customer describes the near death condition of sailfins being sold in the market: “The shop keepers don't take very good care of their sailfins. Most of them have nipped tails, swollen jaws due to rubbing against cage wiring and some have swollen legs. They put their lizards in very cramped environments. These are very badly treated lizards. I hope someone will buy some of them so that they won't be treated that bad anymore." Will these lizards become history? There's a high possibility. While the Philippines has some of the world’s rarest flora and fauna, the country is second on the list of Asian countries that have the highest percentage of threatened species. Clearly an indication that moves to protect the country’s environment have not yet reigned over greed and apathy. - Andreo C. Calonzo, GMANews.TV