Eti Rene Vendiola or famously known in their town as Tatay Eti, is the owner of a private forest named, Liptong Woodland in Bacong, Negros Oriental, which perhaps the 1st successful Private Forest established in the entire archipelago.
Tatay Eti started his interest for the environment in 1972, when he worked as a field guide in the lush highlands of Negros Oriental for researchers of Siliman University. Meanwhile, as a local of Negros, Tatay Eti was able to see and experience while growing up the unparalleled beauty of nature in his hometown, as well as the destruction and horrors against the environment which brought upon by the massive logging concession happened in the 60s to 90s.
Realizing that the sky-reaching dipterocarps that he once looked were gone, in 1994, Tatay Eti started to pick up some wildlings in the patches of forests of Negros, and decided to plant and nurture it in his farm that he inherited from his parents. His personal advocacy grew even more after he attended a seminar in Visayas State University along with environmental NGOs, where he learned more about native trees, and got inspired and challenged to live up to his values. Hence, in 2004 Tatay Eti started his own nursery of native trees, which later on be outplanted in his 1-hectare farm, which he dedicated to turn into a sanctuary for threatened native trees in 2006, which is now named “Liptong Woodland”.
