Pages in the category Mountain Ranges of the Philippines: Caraballo Mountains, Cordillera Central de Panay, Cordillera Central (Luzon). Forested mountains also provide essential habitat for a multitude of plants and animals, and a refuge for endangered endemic species, such as the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga Jefferyi), the Philippine warty piggy (Sus philippensis) and the Philippine tarsier (Carlito syrichta). The northern end of the Pantarón mountain range is Mount Balatukan, a gigantic stratovolcano composed of a long and elevated ridge crowned by multiple peaks. However, despite its indisputable value and its wealth of protected areas, the Sierra Madre, like all mountain ranges in the Philippines, suffers continuous degradation due to logging, mining, poaching and the rapid conversion of forests into farms and plantations and commercial and residential areas.
The best thing about hiking the mountain range is seeing rare species of animals and plants, such as orchids, brown deer and cloud rats. Only a few mountaineers have tried to climb its mountains, and even fewer have climbed to its coveted peaks and described the surrounding lands, not so much because of the risks and dangers inherent to the mountain range, but because of the precariousness and instability of its location. Home to Maria Makiling, a goddess who protects the mountain and its treasures, Mount Makiling is one of the most mystical mountains in the archipelago. Local and foreign mountaineers have at least 95 reasons to explore the Philippine mountain ranges.
The Mount Hamiguitan Mountain Range Wildlife Sanctuary encompasses five identified forest ecosystems, each of which is found at increasingly higher altitudes. They have deep cultural, social and economic ties — links that extend over many generations and go back to past times — with the mountains of the Kalatungan mountain range, as well as with those of the Kitanglad mountain range, to the north. But even more unfortunate is the fact that the desperate situation of the Lumads and the devastation of the Daguma Mountains have attracted only little, if any, attention. The southern Sierra Madre, which is only about a third the length of its northern counterpart, extends southward from Dingalan (Aurora) to Atimonan (Quezon), where the entire mountain range comes to a standstill.
Other notable mountains in the Zambales mountain range are Mount Natib and Mount Mariveles, in southern Bataan, which together represent about four-fifths of the province's total land area. In addition, the sources of all the larger rivers that drain the island of Panay flow from the forested mountains of the mountain range, including the Panay, Jalaur, Aklan, Sibalom and Bugang rivers. It was the Igorots who built the tall and extensive clusters of rice terraces on the slopes of the hills, valleys and mountains of the Cordilleras. Another high peak in the mountain range, the second highest, is Mount Ragang, known to locals as the Blue Mountain, which at a height of 2,714 m (8,904 ft) above sea level is the seventh highest mountain in Mindanao and the tenth highest mountain in the Philippines.
That is the total mountain count in the country, and more than 30 of them have peaks that significantly exceed 1000 meters.
