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Indigenous Knowledge Of Bugkalots On Endemic Tree Species In Landingan, Nagtipunan Quirino

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Indigenous Knowledge – defined. Such knowledge has been accumulated from a long series of observations of natural phenomena and trial and error process of local people. It can also be acquired from long and patient observation and actual farm trials. Moreover, farmers are not often knowledgeable about the scientific background or explanation for the many cause and effect relationship among activities and outcomes of their production system. It is likely that they didn't know the concepts of ecological effects of genetic variations and species combination but they in fact, been applying these in their production system or farming practices.
Having undergone the slow process of formation, testing, modification and further verification over long periods of time, indigenous knowledge in agriculture have acquired strong scientific basis even the people themselves were not well versed with the scientific explanation of their practice or production system. Unlike in agriculture, forestry requires a much longer time for its productive activities to reach fruition. Hence, it is much more difficult for farmers to observe complete production cycles and draw inferences from the basis for generating indigenous or local forestry knowledge.
However, local forestry knowledge contributes significantly to people's welfare and survival and is therefore worthy of documentation and application. While other views forest as "unproductive" where useless animals and plants thrive, local people have been able to identify many different plants species which are capable of yielding various products for food, medicine, forage, fuel and others. The forest therefore is considered to be a storehouse upon which farmers can rely for food security when regular crops in the lowland farm fails. Similarly, active ingredients of widely used medicines to cure tropical diseases comes from different forest tree species that have long been known...