Bilar Tarsier

Overview

Bilar Tarsier is an agritourism attraction in barangay Villa Aurora, Bilar municipality, listed in the Bohol Provincial Tourism Office’s inventory of tourist attractions (BPTO Table 11, 2025). It is classified under “Sports and Recreational Facilities / Zoo and Botanical Garden” in the DOT-BPTO taxonomy, suggesting a facility where Philippine tarsiers (Cephalopachus syrichta) can be viewed in a managed setting. Bilar municipality sits within the known tarsier habitat zone in central Bohol, adjacent to the Rajah Sikatuna Protected Landscape.

The Philippine tarsier is nocturnal and critically sensitive to noise, light, and stress. Responsible tarsier viewing facilities operate under guidelines that prohibit flash photography, limit group sizes, and maintain low ambient sound.

This entity’s location — Barangay Villa Aurora, Bilar — matches the address of the well-documented Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area, which independent sources confirm is managed by the Philippine Tarsier Foundation and operates habitat preservation, research, and education programmes; the same Villa Aurora site is referenced in a peer-reviewed floristic inventory as “the proposed site for a Tarsier Tourism Center.” Given the matching barangay and municipality, this is very likely the same facility as “Bilar Tarsier,” though no source uses that exact name, so the identification is treated as probable rather than certain. Reported entrance fee: PHP 80. Reported opening hours: 8:00 AM–5:00 PM.

The facility is DENR-certified (since July 2016) to care for Philippine tarsiers, and it is included in Nature’s Wonder Travel & Tours’ Countryside Tour Package, indicating an established, tour-integrated operation. [TO ENRICH: authoritative confirmation that “Bilar Tarsier” and “Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area” are the same registered facility under that exact name.]

Location

Barangay Villa Aurora, Bilar municipality, Bohol. Bilar lies approximately 30 km north-east of Tagbilaran City along the road toward the Chocolate Hills. The Bilar Man-Made Forest is a nearby landmark on the same road corridor. The Rajah Sikatuna Protected Landscape, which covers a significant portion of Bilar municipality, begins east and south of the town centre.

Getting There

From Tagbilaran City: approximately 45–60 minutes by private vehicle or motorcycle via the Loboc–Bilar road. No regular jeepney route serves Villa Aurora directly; habal-habal (motorcycle taxi) from Bilar town proper is the likely option for independent travellers. Countryside tour packages from Tagbilaran or Panglao do not typically include this site; access is most practical with a rental motorcycle or hired van.

Practical Info

Reported entrance fee: PHP 80. Reported opening hours: 8:00 AM–5:00 PM (both figures per the presumed-matching Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area at the same Villa Aurora, Bilar address — see identification note above; not independently confirmed under the exact name “Bilar Tarsier”). Reported contact number for the presumed-matching facility: +63 927 641 2063 (an email address is circulated on several secondary listing sites but could not be verified from a directly-accessible primary source, so it is omitted here). As with all tarsier-viewing sites, visiting in the early morning or late afternoon coincides with periods when tarsiers are slightly more active — they spend daylight hours roosting in low vegetation. Flash photography should be avoided entirely. Group sizes should be kept small to reduce stress on the animals.

What to Expect

As of a 2017 account, 8 tarsiers were viewable on site at the presumed-matching facility, with others reportedly bred in captivity; visitor review titles from 2015–2023 suggest the number on display varies over time (roughly 4–10), though this could not be independently verified from a directly-accessible primary source. [TO ENRICH: on-site habitat quality and guide availability.] As a BPTO-listed agritourism attraction in a zoo/botanical garden category, the facility likely offers guided viewing of tarsiers in a semi-wild or enclosed garden setting. The Villa Aurora barangay location places it near forest edge within the broader tarsier range.

Notes

Source: Bohol Tourism Profile Eco Dev2025.pdf, BPTO Table 11 — Inventory of Tourist Attractions. Source profile lists this attraction by name and classification only. Coordinates updated 2026-07-28 to the mapped location of the presumed-matching Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area, Villa Aurora, Bilar (lat 9.676218, lng 124.091175) — see Wanderlog citation below; treat as approximate pending independent confirmation under the exact name “Bilar Tarsier”.

• Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area | Entrance Fee, Opening Hours & More, accessed 2026-07-17 (fee, hours, address, management).
• Floristic Inventory of The Proposed Site for Tarsier Tourism Center in Villa Aurora, Bilar, Bohol, Philippines, accessed 2026-07-17 (confirms Villa Aurora, Bilar as the tarsier tourism site location).
• Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area, Bilar — Wanderlog, accessed 2026-07-28 (GPS coordinates: lat 9.676218, lng 124.091175).
• Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area: Peculiar Creatures and Where to Find Them | Philippine Primer, accessed 2026-07-28 (DENR certification since July 2016; 8 tarsiers viewable as of 2017 with others bred in captivity; facility included in Nature’s Wonder Travel & Tours’ Countryside Tour Package).
• Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area Tickets | Trip.com, accessed 2026-07-28 (contact phone +63 927 641 2063; address “Villa Aurora, Bilar, 6317 Bohol”; hours 8:00 AM–5:00 PM).

2026-07-28 research pass (fresh angle from the 2026-07-17 pass, which relied on forevervacation.com and the ResearchGate floristic paper): checked Wanderlog, Philippine Primer, Trip.com, TripAdvisor (attraction page and individual review pages both returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch — could not independently verify visitor-reported tarsier counts beyond what appeared in search-result snippets, so those figures are flagged as unverified above), Waze (address only, no coordinates in fetched content), the Facebook business page (fetch returned only the page title, no accessible About/contact section), OpenStreetMap Nominatim (no match returned), and web.archive.org (fetch blocked in this environment). No source found anywhere — English or otherwise — uses the exact name “Bilar Tarsier”; every source describes “Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area,” so the facility-identity question remains open. The email address “btpc.tarsier@gmail.com” recurs across several secondary listing sites and AI search summaries but could not be confirmed from a directly-fetched primary page, so it was deliberately left out of the body text. On-site habitat quality (vegetation type, enclosure design) and guide availability were not addressed by any source checked this round.