Bilar: The Man-Made Forest and Rajah Sikatuna's Gateway

Bilar is a landlocked municipality in Bohol’s interior highlands, on the main road linking Loboc to the Chocolate Hills area in Carmen, at an elevation that gives it noticeably cooler air than the coast. Most visitors know it for the man-made forest — a roughly two-kilometre corridor of towering mahogany planted along the national highway — and as the gateway to Rajah Sikatuna National Park, Bohol’s primary protected forest. Around 18,000 residents live across barangays including Poblacion, Cabad, Owac, and Mahayag, working mostly in farming (coconut, root crops) with some eco-tourism employment along the forest corridor.

The park, cited at roughly 9,000 to just over 10,400 hectares of karst limestone forest depending on the source — the provincial tourism office’s own figure of 9,023 hectares doesn’t match the 10,452.60 hectares set out in the original 1987 proclamation — borders Sierra Bullones to the south. It was declared protected under Presidential Proclamation No. 129, named for the Boholano chieftain Sikatuna who sealed the blood compact with Miguel López de Legazpi in 1565 near present-day Loay. The parish, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, marks its 24 June feast; Cebuano is spoken throughout.

The mahogany corridor’s official history runs longer than the tunnel effect most visitors photograph today: the reforestation effort was formally launched in December 1953 as the Loboc Watershed Reforestation Project, continuing a plan drawn up by a provincial governor in 1947, with full implementation following in 1958 from a central nursery in neighbouring Garcia Hernandez. The dense, symmetrical tree tunnel that draws the cameras dates to a later, separate planting drive: local students, scouts, and government volunteers put in the bulk of the mahogany saplings between 1968 and the late 1970s, drawing seedlings from a nursery in Bilar’s own Barangay Riverside to stabilise eroded hillsides between Loboc and Bilar. The uniform rows and the 5–10°C temperature drop under the canopy are both artefacts of that deliberate, single-species planting.

That single-species choice is also the forest’s ecological limitation. Mahogany is native to Central and South America, introduced across Southeast Asia for timber and erosion control rather than for habitat value, and its acidic leaf litter suppresses native undergrowth — which is why the forest floor reads so clean and open compared to the tangled dipterocarp interior of Rajah Sikatuna itself, and why bird and insect activity here runs noticeably thinner than in the adjacent protected landscape. The plantation still does real environmental work: it sequesters carbon, and the roots visible half-exposed along the cut banks either side of the road are still holding soil that would otherwise wash off the slope, the exact erosion problem the 1950s program was built to solve. Locals call the tight switchback climb out of Loboc leading up to the tree tunnel tina-i sa manok — chicken’s intestines — for the way the road doubles back on itself before levelling out at the top.

The park itself holds hiking trails, wild Philippine tarsiers, and Mag-aso Falls within its boundaries — a multi-tiered waterfall with swimmable lower pools reached by a short trail. It’s also one of Bohol’s better bird-watching sites, with more than 120 recorded species including the endangered streaked reed warbler and the Philippine cockatoo, the endemic Visayan tarictic hornbill, and mammals ranging from long-tailed macaques to the Philippine flying lemur alongside the tarsier population. Four named springs sit inside the protected landscape — Logarita, Anislag, Mabugnao, and Aghuban — of which Logarita, in Barangay Riverside, is the most developed, with picnic tables, benches, and restrooms maintained by the provincial tourism office.

Two smaller, mostly local attractions round out Bilar’s interior beyond the highway corridor. Pangas Falls, in Barangay Dagohoy on the upland stretch toward the Chocolate Hills, is a low drop feeding a pool wide and deep enough to hold a crowd — picnic tables and open ground make it a family spot rather than a tour-van stop, and the visitors here are almost always Boholano rather than foreign. Duangon Cold Spring, in Barangay Zamora, sits under dense canopy that keeps the water running colder than the surrounding air, in keeping with the same shade-first microclimate that defines the mahogany belt more broadly.

The man-made forest’s entrance-fee status has been unsettled for years and is worth knowing about before a visit: the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office began collecting a PHP 30 (local) / PHP 100 (foreign) environmental fee at the site in January 2020 under a Protected Area Management Board order, suspended it within days after pushback from residents and tour operators, and as of a 2023 follow-up report still had not resumed collection while a proper visitor facility — comfort rooms, parking — remained unbuilt. Budgeting a small fee just in case, rather than assuming free entry, is the safer plan.

What’s here, briefly

• Man-Made Forest — a 2km canopy of planted mahogany along the highway, photographed from the road or walked on forest trails.
• Rajah Sikatuna National Park — protected forest with hiking trails, wild tarsiers, four named springs, and birdwatching.
• Mag-aso Falls — a multi-tiered waterfall inside the park, swimmable at the lower pools.
• Logarita Spring — the most developed of the park’s springs, with picnic tables, benches, and restrooms.
• Pangas Falls and Duangon Cold Spring — quieter, mostly local swimming spots in Barangays Dagohoy and Zamora.
• Banat-i Cultural Village — a small site near the man-made forest presenting traditional Boholano crafts and music.

Getting there

From Tagbilaran, take the Loboc–Bilar road; buses and vans from Dao Terminal bound for Carmen or Sagbayan pass through, a 45-minute to 1-hour ride. The man-made forest sits directly on the national highway, impossible to miss travelling from Loboc to Carmen; jeepneys on the Loboc–Carmen route stop in Bilar’s poblacion on request.

Travel tips

The man-made forest is busiest between 9 a.m. and noon when tour vans pass through — arrive before 8 a.m. or after 2 p.m. for a quieter visit. For Rajah Sikatuna National Park, register at the DENR ranger station at the entrance and hire a local guide for trails beyond the immediate area. Accommodation in Bilar itself is limited; Loboc, 20 minutes west, has better guesthouse options for those basing in the area.

Other places to consider

• Loboc — the river town with better accommodation, 20 minutes west.
• Carmen — the Chocolate Hills viewpoint town further along the same road.
• Sierra Bullones — the neighbouring municipality bordering the protected landscape to the south.
• Batuan — another Chocolate Hills-zone town on the road north.

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Location and travel detail reflect publicly available information as of 2026-07-16. Confirm ranger station hours and guide availability before visiting. bohol-philippines.com earns a commission on bookings made through partner links at no cost to you.