Cordillera Central

Also known as: Cordillera Range · Cordillera Mountains · Gran Cordillera · Central Cordillera of Luzon · Nueva Provincia (Spanish-era name for the whole range)

Places

Definition

Cordillera Central is the largest mountain range in the Philippines, a massive north–south backbone that runs through northern Luzon for about 320 kilometers, reaches a width of 118 kilometers, and covers roughly 22,500 square kilometers — about one-sixth of the island. Its highest summit, Mount Pulag (2,928 meters), is the tallest mountain on Luzon and the third highest in the country. The range fully contains the six provinces of the Cordillera Administrative Region — Abra, Apayao, Benguet, Ifugao, Kalinga, and Mountain Province — and spills into parts of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, Nueva Vizcaya, and Cagayan, so its physical footprint is wider than the political region that borrows its name. This entry covers the mountain range itself; the administrative region is treated in a separate entry on the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR). (Wikipedia — Cordillera Central (Luzon))

The range is the ancestral domain of the Igorot, or “people of the mountains” — the Ifugao, Kalinga, Bontoc, Ibaloi, Kankanaey, Itneg, and related peoples — and is celebrated for the hand-carved rice terraces of Ifugao, inscribed by UNESCO in 1995 as the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. Its watersheds feed the headwaters of the Abra, Chico (a tributary of the Cagayan), Asin–Magat, and Agno river systems and host the Ambuklao and Binga hydroelectric dams in Benguet. Geologically, the chain comprises three sub-ranges — the Malayan, Central, and Polis — and includes thermally active but eruption-free volcanoes such as Mount Binuluan (2,329 m), Mount Santo Tomas (2,252 m), and Mount Patoc (1,865 m), known for solfataras and hot springs rather than eruptions. (Wikipedia — Cordillera Central (Luzon), Wikipedia — Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	Cordillera Central (Luzon)
Wikidata	Cordillera Central (Q2087864)
DBpedia	Cordillera_Central_(Luzon)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	cordillera
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Cordillera Central Luzon mountain range indigenous peoples rice terraces Philippines
ConceptNet	cordillera
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Cordillera Range
Cordillera Mountains
Gran Cordillera
Central Cordillera of Luzon
Nueva Provincia (Spanish-era name for the whole range)

Examples and Analogies

Luzon’s highland roof: The Cordillera Central is to Luzon what the Alps are to Europe — a cool, elevated spine that shapes climate, isolates communities, and anchors regional identity. Its highest point, Mount Pulag, is Luzon’s “roof” at 2,928 meters.
Range versus region: “Cordillera Central” is a landform, while the “Cordillera Administrative Region” is a set of provincial boundaries drawn within and around it — much as “the Rocky Mountains” and “the State of Colorado” overlap without being the same thing. Six provinces lie wholly inside the range, but the range also extends into six more.
A natural water tower: The plateau around Mount Data acts like a huge elevated reservoir whose slopes feed four major river systems — the Abra, the Chico, the Asin–Magat, and the Agno — supplying irrigation, hydropower, and domestic water to both highland and lowland Luzon.

Usage Scenarios

1. Terrace Agriculture and Agroforestry

Ifugao communities cultivate the range’s steep slopes through the rice terrace–muyong system, in which communally managed clan forests on the terraces’ upper slopes conserve water and soil; UNESCO has recognized the terrace clusters of Batad, Bangaan, Mayoyao, Hungduan, and Nagacadan, and the site is also a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. (Wikipedia — Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras)

2. Hydropower and Watershed Services

The Ambuklao and Binga dams on the Agno River in Benguet generate hydroelectric power from Cordillera headwaters, while the range’s upper basins regulate flows into the Cagayan and Pampanga river systems — making watershed protection in the highlands a downstream concern for much of Luzon. (Wikipedia — Cordillera Central (Luzon))

3. Mountaineering and Cultural Tourism

Trekkers climb Mount Pulag for its sea-of-clouds summit and traverse the terrace villages of Batad and Bangaan in Banaue, a tourism flow that supports guide services, homestays, and handicraft sales across Ifugao, Benguet, and Mountain Province. (Wikipedia — Cordillera Central (Luzon), Wikipedia — Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras)

4. Indigenous Governance and Ancestral Domain Management

Kalinga and Bontoc communities administer upland territory through customary institutions such as the bodong (peace-pact) system, which regulates relations among villages and proved capable of coordinating region-wide political mobilization during the Chico River dam struggle. (Wikipedia — Chico River Dam Project)

Strategies

Manage the range as an integrated watershed system rather than province by province, since headwater deforestation or mining in one province transmits floods and sediment to communities downstream.
Sustain the muyong forest-terrace system that underpins Ifugao agriculture, pairing customary community management with national conservation support.
Require genuine consultation and free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous communities for large infrastructure or extractive projects, applying the lessons of the Chico River dam controversy.
Diversify highland livelihoods beyond farming and mining through regulated ecotourism, agro-processing, and service industries anchored in Baguio and the terrace towns.

Security and Safety Measures

Mountain weather changes fast at altitude: hikers on Mount Pulag and other high summits should carry cold-weather gear and register with local guides and tourism offices, since temperatures on the peaks drop sharply even outside the rainy season.
The range’s steep slopes and cut roads are landslide-prone during typhoons and prolonged rain; travelers should heed advisories from local disaster risk reduction offices before crossing mountain highways.
Some thermally active sites, such as the hot springs around Mount Binuluan in Kalinga and Asin Hot Springs near Mount Santo Tomas, emit volcanic gas; visitors should stay on established trails and avoid enclosed vents.
Areas of past and active mining have unstable ground and abandoned workings; entry without authorization from operators and communities is unsafe and unlawful.

Historical Context

Under Spanish rule, the entire range was named the Nueva Provincia (New Province). The rice terraces that define the range’s cultural landscape were long described as 2,000 years old in UNESCO materials, but the Ifugao Archaeological Project argues on radiocarbon evidence that terrace construction intensified only around four centuries ago, coinciding with Spanish arrival on the coast — a dating debate that continues among scholars. Under American rule and after World War II, mining companies opened large gold and copper operations in Benguet, drawing Igorot communities into a century-long contest over land, tailings, and rehabilitation that continues today. (Wikipedia — Cordillera Central (Luzon), Wikipedia — Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, Cultural Survival)

The most consequential modern conflict over the range was the Chico River Dam Project. Surveys began in 1965, and after the 1973 oil crisis the Marcos regime pursued four hydroelectric dams on the Chico River that would have displaced an estimated 100,000 Kalinga and Bontoc people, flooding villages, terraces, and sacred burial grounds without consultation. Kalinga and Bontoc elders united through the bodong system in 1975, and the movement’s spokesperson, the pangat Macli-ing Dulag, was shot dead by soldiers at his home on 24 April 1980. His killing galvanized Cordillera-wide resistance, now commemorated every 24 April as Cordillera Day, and contributed to the World Bank and the government abandoning the project in the early 1980s. (Wikipedia — Chico River Dam Project)

Challenges and Controversies

Large-Scale Mining and Ancestral Domain

The Cordillera’s gold and copper deposits have drawn mining companies for more than a century, and indigenous communities continue to demand the return of land and the rehabilitation of areas damaged by corporate mining — a dispute with Benguet Corporation and successor operations that indigenous organizations describe as a hundred-year struggle. (Cultural Survival)

Dams and the Chico River Legacy

The Chico dams were stopped, but the underlying tension — national energy and irrigation projects sited on indigenous land — recurs with each new hydropower and irrigation proposal in the range, keeping questions of consent, displacement, and benefit-sharing unsettled. (Wikipedia — Chico River Dam Project)

Rice Terrace Degradation and Out-Migration

The UNESCO terrace clusters were placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 2001 to 2012 because of abandonment, changing land use, and unregulated tourism-related construction, and were removed only after conservation measures took hold; sustaining the terraces against out-migration and economic pressure remains an ongoing challenge. (Wikipedia — Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras)

Conflating the Range with the Region

Because the administrative region adopted the range’s name, official statistics and public debate often blur the two, obscuring the fact that large portions of the Cordillera Central lie outside CAR in Ilocos, Pangasinan, Nueva Vizcaya, and Cagayan — a recurring source of confusion in planning and reporting. (Wikipedia — Cordillera Central (Luzon))