By Bohol Island News Staff | 12:45 PM December 21, 2019
Bohol Gov. Art Yap said on Friday that whale sharks in Lila need not be fed to stay alive.
In a statement, he said that feeding the whale sharks will affect their life habits, and their natural order and interfere in whatever ecological roles they are fulfilling in the marine world.
“By feeding them, we are effectively keeping them captive. Worst, we are disabling their ability to survive in the wild. We are training them to be dependent on manual feeding and will expose them to untold dangers by conditioning them to approach boats and humans,” he said.
He said that to preserve whalesharks, Bohol should focus instead on sustainable practices for water, power, septage and the protection of our environment.
He said the challenge for Bohol today is not to attract visitors and tourism commerce but keeping Bohol pristine and sustainable for the generations yet to come.
He asked the people of Lila and the local government “to take a step back and reflect on these fundamental issues that define our very humanity.”
“The People and Government of Lila must decide what they want to be: The savior of lives or the destroyer of worlds,” he asked.
There is no official statement yet from the local government unit of Lila.
The “Taug Whale Shark Watching and Snorkeling” in Barangay Taug in Lila town drew protests from environment advocates and agencies.
The operation collects an individual fee of P500 for locals and P1,000 for non-local tourists, and features watching, close interaction via snorkeling, and the feeding of the whale sharks (locally known as balilan).
According to the Free the Whale Sharks Coalition-Bohol, whale feeding is an ecological trap.
The group said that the feeding of wildlife is strictly prohibited in well-managed protected areas. They emphasized that the practice of feeding whale sharks and its consequences should not be encouraged and replicated.
Section 11 of Republic Act 8550, otherwise known as the 1998 Philippine Fisheries Code underlined among others, the protection of rare, threatened and endangered species in Section 11. Section 56 of the same provision further spelled out the law for non-obstruction to defined migration paths of migratory species.
As of 2016, whale sharks are an endangered species according to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). Republic Act 9147 furthermore provided for the conservation and protection of wildlife resources and their habitats.
Green Peace Philippines and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines in separate statements urged the local government unit of Lila, provincial government and other government agencies to promote sustainable tourism practices and prohibit the practice of feeding.
