The Banao Indigenous Community Conserved Area (ICCA) The ‘Bogis’ or ancestral domain of the Banaos is located in the Province of Abra. The bogis is generally bounded by natural permanent land marks like ridges, rivers, peaks, origin of water flow, big stones and large trees. The present approximate land area is 23,806 hectares covering three barangays: Barangay Talalang - 7,060 hectares Barangay Pantikian - 5,974 hectares, and Barangay Balbalasang - 10,772 hectares. The ancestral territorial boundaries of the Banaos were inherited from Manakem (forefathers) that encompasses all the resources including in the periphery of communal forests and watersheds which is the source of Saltan River flowing down to Pinukpuk Municipality. It also includes the communal pasture land inside Banao community. The Role of Banao Community in the Protection of BBNP. The Banao Ancestral domain is a heritage of the Banao Tribe. It has defined them as a people and their culture crafted around it. It has sustained and provided everything that they needed to live self-reliantly and sufficiently. It provides abundant clean waters to many villages upstream and downstream for centuries even beyond what memory can recall. The Banao peoples significantly contribute their share to temper the adverse effects of climate change long before government and advocates have called for actions. These pushed them to hold on to their age-old indigenous systems in managing their resources. The Banaos have their own traditional and indigenous system of protection and conservation of their communal watersheds, communal forests, rivers and endangered plants and wild animals, rare trees and critical resources that are within their domain. It is called ‘Lapat’ or ‘Palit’ which means ‘prohibit’ or ‘regulate’ and according to them is a ‘legacy’ they inherited from their fore-fathers. The general purpose of Lapat is to protect a prescribed communal watersheds (u-od), forests (ginufat), rivers (wangwang), grazing lands (pasto), swidden farms (uma) within the ancestral territory or bogis. It is also to protect rare or important plant or animal species from diminishing or becoming scarce, whether they be in communal or private lot, as they are critical to the sustainability.