As we mark the 54th year of World Earth Day today, April 22, 2024, amid high heat index ranging from 37°C to 44°C brought about by the prevailing El Niño phenomenon, allow me to lead you back to rock towers.

Rock towers are natural rock formations that could either be in the form of a chimney, a monument, a pinnacle, or even a pohaku (lava rock).

These natural formations are here to give us water. There were not as much worry back then about water sources when these naturally designed pillars, especially crags, were left undisturbed.

But because of large commercial use for rocks and byproducts, rock pillars are among threatened geological features.

Rock towers are natural rainwater catchments and filters but on various occasions we have learned of human activities detrimental to rock pillars that lead to the loss of these valuable natural reservoirs.

Not only are these pinnacles a huge water tank, it also holds the soil in place. It pads the rush of water in the event of cloudbursts.

However, development works have come to reduce important rock towers into rubbles either as construction materials, or are enclosed in private properties where establishments favor its sturdiness as physical foundation for certain business establishments where these offer a grand vista of the seascape or the lowlands.

Rock pinnacles have come to take a special place in my heart as I have taken personal explorations by the way these have been protecting us in tens of thousands of ways through tens of thousands of years.

These are bound supposedly to outlive us and offer the same extent of protection to those who will come after us.

However, with increasing business ventures interested in quarrying and mining potential sites, these geo-wonders may not be able to outlast us. That is what I dread the most: that day we recite a requiem to remnants of our rock towers.

If we are now suffering from depleting water sources in the last three months under a prolonged dry spell, and if our communities go inundated at the slightest rainfall, what will become of our offspring if rock pillars must give way to the short-lived promises of economic opportunities such as mining, quarrying, commercial residential developments, and the like?

We cannot stop men - or their conglomerates - from getting entangled in their own follies, but we can at least stand against the harm that these follies could inflict upon us. We have a fighting chance to somehow use that power within us to protect at least our own community. At least for once we have done a good turn in our lifetime.

These geological monuments have always made it without us, humans. But none of our kind can claim he can survive sustainably without rock towers.

Our social media accounts have spoken much of our sentiments, these can be used to share further sightings of illegal activities done to any rock pillar in our respective province. We can use or virtual voice, at least, to stand our ground and join the stakeholders of World Earth Day in this rock romance.

Conservation of these geo-wonders could be our "capstone" in padding further water crisis in our areas during droughts, and further episodes of flooding in the event of La Niña.

Rock towers - a georeserve - belong to all of us. Therefore, this should form part of our continued conservation efforts now that we are almost always reeling from weather-related catastrophes.

What mountains and ecosystems were already destroyed we cannot do a thing. But what has remained intact still gives us the opportunity in conservation to be instrumental and relevant, not feckless and dysfunctional.

Rock on to heightened awareness on World Earth Days.