The year 2000 ushers a crucial challenge for local governance in the Philippines and that is the looming conflict over depleted natural resources. Palawan’s northern cluster of islands is the setting for a community initiative that was shaped by such conditions. After perhaps thousands of years of settlement, eight Calamian Tagbanwa communities faced imminent disenfranchisement in the modern age because of the unabated, wholesale destruction of local marine resources. Despite coordination with barangay, municipal and law enforcement authorities, the communities’ past efforts to contain illegal fishing and large-scale, commercial fishing had been hampered by a lack of legal recognition over their right to utilize, regulate and manage customary earth and marine resources. In a historic step, the Calamian Tagbanwa of Coron have filed the first formal legal claim in the Philippines for their “ancestral waters”. This paper outlines the efforts and successes of Calamian Tagbanwa communities in gaining legal recognition of their ancestral lands and waters, promote community management of coral reefs and ancestral islands, and forge productive partnerships that aim to spread the cost and burden of managing and conserving a vast area of northern Palawan.