Sources & photo credits

About this guide

A growing, species-first field guide to the wildlife of the Philippines: mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. This edition lists about 1,300 species, about 1,000 of them with photographs, and more than 600 found only in the Philippines. Species descriptions are still being written.

How the species list was built

Mammals come from the Mammal Diversity Database, whose ranges include the Philippines. Birds come from GBIF occurrence records in the Philippines (retrieved October 2026) matched to the Clements/eBird checklist, plus species whose AviList v2026 range is the Philippines alone; reptiles and amphibians come from GBIF records matched to the Catalogue of Life. Birds with at least 20 records and reptiles and amphibians with at least 5 records and Philippine-only distribution (or at least 20 records) are listed; species with fewer records, which can be vagrants, escapes or misidentifications, are held back until they have been checked by hand. "Endemic" marks species whose published range is the Philippines alone; for reptiles and amphibians this is currently inferred from occurrence records and will be checked against the Reptile Database. Philippine taxonomy is changing quickly, with many recent splits in birds, bats and rodents, so some recently renamed species may be missing or listed under an older name. Common names follow the same lists, then the other Wildlife of Everywhere guides, then Wikipedia; many frogs, lizards and small mammals have no English name yet, so their scientific name is shown.

Conservation status

This guide shows only the Philippine national list: the DENR Updated National List of Threatened Philippine Fauna and Their Categories (DENR Administrative Order 2019-09), published by the Biodiversity Management Bureau, with its categories Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable and Other Threatened Species. A species that is not on that list is shown as unknown: that means no national category is available here, not that the species is safe. The guide does not reproduce IUCN Red List data. Some DENR entries use older scientific names and were matched by hand to the names used here.

Reference sources

• Mammal Diversity Database: mammal names and ranges (CC BY 4.0)
• Clements/eBird taxonomy and AviList: bird names, taxonomy and ranges
• Catalogue of Life: reptile and amphibian taxonomy (CC BY 4.0)
• DENR Biodiversity Management Bureau: national list of threatened fauna, DAO 2019-09 (conservation categories)
• GBIF — Philippines: occurrence records used to build the lists

Planning a visit

Many parks need permits, guides or boat transport, and weather, typhoons and sea conditions change access through the year. Some areas, especially in parts of Mindanao and the Sulu Sea, have travel advisories. Check with the park office, your operator and current government advice before you travel rather than relying on the details here.

Wildlife sightings are never guaranteed. The species listed for each place are what is realistically possible there, not what you should expect on a given day.

Your plans and sightings

Your trip plan and sightings are saved in this browser, on this device only. We never see them. Clearing your browser data will clear them too, so download the PDF if you want a copy to keep. Email buttons open a draft in your mail app; nothing is sent until you send it.

Species descriptions

Species accounts are our own paraphrased summaries of published, openly accessible sources, mainly Wikipedia species accounts, and for snakes and other reptiles also The Reptile Database (reptile-database.reptarium.cz), with national checklists and Red Lists where cited. Each account names its source in brackets. Some are general to the species and are not specific to this country; a short entry means the sources said little, not that we left something out. We use no IUCN Red List data.

Photo credits

Photographs come from iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA licences, or were taken by the Wildlife of Everywhere team. Each one keeps its photographer's name, licence and a link to the original.

Photographs are chosen to show the species clearly, so many were taken elsewhere in its range rather than in the Philippines. Tap the i on any photograph to see who took it. The full list is below.

View all photo credits