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Sunday, November 16, 2025 Vol. 21 No. 39
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What the forest remembered: 15 years later, Leonard Co’s fieldwork speaks again, a gentle but stark reminder that the first defense against devastating floods are the native trees that the People’s Botanist studied so well and championed until his untimely death.
LEONARD’S SONG
IN A TIME OF FLOODING
MIGS DE LAS LLAGAS, curator of the recovered digital archive of botanist Leonard Co, stands by the Dita Tree in UP Diliman, where a third of Co’s ashes were scattered. His work to restore Co’s field photos complements the broader effort by friends and colleagues, including Ronald Achacoso, who plans to improve the memorial marker. BERNARD TESTA
By Bless Aubrey Ogerio
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
T
HIS old riddle, according to Ronald Achacoso, head of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society, has become a fitting frame for a loss that still reverberates through Philippine science.
UP Institute of Biology professor Lilian Rodriguez recounts the moment an old, corroded hard drive believed to be lost was handed to them for recovery. “Since those were Sir Leonard’s files, we were certain they had value,” she said. The restored trove now forms the core of Co’s digital archive. BERNARD TESTA
RONALD ACHACOSO, head of the Philippine Native Plants Conservation Society and one of Leonard Co’s closest friends, said he hopes to enhance the memorial site in UP Diliman so visitors can reflect on the botanist’s legacy. “I want this place to be a source of contemplation… to recharge, to orient yourself—to ask, what would Leonard do?” BERNARD TESTA
Fifteen years after botanist Leonard Co was killed by government troops while conducting fieldwork in Leyte, the question lands with a sharper weight. His death—described by authorities as a case of soldiers mistaking him and his two compan-
ions for rebels—was followed by years of quiet and slow-moving justice, the kind of silence that dissipates the way an echo disappears into the canopy. Leonard, forest guard Sofronio Cortez, and guide Julius Borromeo may have seemed to have died in
vain. But a decade and a half later, their death in the forest may yet save us from an avoidable death before floods completely overrun our mountains and forests and drown us in our homes. Now, the recovery of an old hard drive thought lost to rust and mold has brought back a voice once unheard. In its restored contents, the forest seems to be speaking again. Inside the hard drive are thousands of images and meticulous notes. These are fragments of Leonard’s final years in the field,
RED CONSTANTINO of the Constantino Foundation stands solemnly beside a portrait of botanist Leonard Co, a reminder of a life devoted to listening to the forest and documenting its secrets. “We want to ensure our past is usable—that members of the scientific community belong to the pantheon of heroes in our nation,” he said, underscoring the enduring weight of Co’s legacy and the urgent need to preserve it for future generations. BERNARD TESTA
traces of the mind of a man who spent his life listening to the language of trees.
Inside the corroded drive
THE digital trove, now being curated by the Institute of Biology (IB) at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman in partnership with the Constantino Foundation and Green Convergence, contains Leonard’s field photographs taken shortly before his death. In July, the Foundation reached out to the Institute to assess whether the deteriorating
drive was still recoverable. “We said that since those were Sir Leonard’s files, we were certain they had value,” IB professor Lilian Rodriguez told BusinessMirror in Filipino. When biologist Migs de las Llagas, who curates the collection, first opened the drive, its contents were in disarray. “Disorganized in the sense that sometimes I’d find large folders with big file sizes, but when I opened them, everything inside was corrupted,” he told this newspaper in a mix of English and Filipino. Continued on A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 59.1140 n JAPAN 0.3825 n UK 77.9950 n HK 7.6070 n CHINA 8.3300 n SINGAPORE 45.4618 n AUSTRALIA 38.5837 n EU 68.7791 n KOREA 0.0402 n SAUDI ARABIA 15.7642 Source: BSP (November 14, 2025)