Palawan earned its nickname honestly. With 700,000 hectares of forest as of 2010, the province shelters species found nowhere else on Earth: the Palawan peacock-pheasant, the Philippine mouse-deer, the Philippine pangolin, the Palawan bearded pig, and the Palawan birdwing butterfly. More than 200 bird species sing through the canopy. Over 600 butterfly species navigate the mountain slopes, drawn to some 1,500 host plant varieties. Beneath the surrounding seas lie nearly 11,000 square kilometers of coral reef -- more than 35 percent of the entire country's reefs. Dugongs still inhabit the coastal waters, though their numbers have fallen critically. Endangered sea turtles nest on the white sand beaches. The province functions as a biological ark, carrying species that have vanished from most of the Philippine archipelago.

The cultural landscape of Palawan is as layered as its geology. Tagalog dominates today, spoken by more than half the population, but the native language of the islands is Cuyonon, which once served as the lingua franca among Palawan's indigenous peoples -- the Agutaynen, Cagayanen, Tagbanua, and Palawano. Kinaray-a is spoken by 19 percent of inhabitants. In the south, where the Sulu Sultanate once held sway, Tausug was the common tongue among the Molbog, Muslim Palawano, and Sama peoples until Cuyonon displaced it in the 19th century. Waves of migration from Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao brought additional languages and religions. A Buddhist temple in Puerto Princesa, Chua Van Phap, was built by Vietnamese refugees who passed through Palawan during the Indochina crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. The Batak and Tagbanwa peoples maintain animist traditions that predate Christianity by millennia. Islam, once practiced by nearly half the population, has declined to roughly 10 percent as Christian settlers have arrived in growing numbers.

Tourism arrived in Palawan not as a gentle tide but as a wave. The province received 1.8 million visitors in 2018, a 21-percent increase over the previous year. The attractions read like an inventory of superlatives. Coron Reefs in the north draw divers to World War II Japanese shipwrecks sunk by United States Navy action on September 24, 1944, resting at depths of 12 to 43 meters. Kayangan Lake, nestled in craggy limestone walls near Coron, offers crystal-clear waters and an underwater moonscape. El Nido Marine Reserve Park, with its limestone karst formations and island-hopping tours, has become an international destination. The Malampaya Sound in Taytay shelters bottlenose and Irrawaddy dolphins. And then there is the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, the underground river system that UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site in 1999 and that was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature in 2012.

Palawan's economy runs on agriculture, fishing, and extractive industries. Rice, corn, and coconut are the major crops. Nickel, copper, manganese, and chromite are mined from the earth. Natural gas reserves of approximately 30,000 trillion cubic feet make Palawan the only oil-producing province in the Philippines. And in 1934, a diver pulled from these waters the 240-millimeter Pearl of Lao Tzu, once considered the largest pearl in the world. But the province's wealth creates tension with its ecological identity. Logging remains a major industry despite the forests' irreplaceable biodiversity. The Philippines' military Western Command is headquartered in Puerto Princesa, and discussions about building a larger naval base at Ulugan Bay reflect Palawan's strategic position facing the contested waters of the South China Sea. The province sits at the intersection of conservation and development, its future shaped by whether it can reconcile the two.