Conservation relay: Private sector participation in restoration of degraded forest landscape in Mt. Makiling, Philippines

This paper presents a corporate volunteer-based strategy for initiating and sustaining forest restoration efforts in Mt. Makiling, Philippines that evolved within the last decade. The strategy, dubbed “conservation relay”, is a process where various private sectors carry out and support restoration efforts in sequential time periods, attending an area from its degraded status to a condition favoring natural restoration processes. From 1993 to 2006, about 830 individuals belonging to 14 companies/groups contributed to the rehabilitation of 31.5 hectares of degraded forest areas in Mt. Makiling. Recent research on the impacts of these efforts in one of the sites showed substantial improvement in vegetation cover, species composition, microclimate, and soil conditions that now favor natural regeneration processes.