Rain forest returns in Philippine capital

Manila's only nature park benefits from 15-year effort to reclaim patchwork of farms, shanties

A tropical rain forest has regrown against all odds on the edge of the Philippine capital's biggest open-air dump, and is now a patch of green paradise in a sprawling metropolis blighted by giant slums.

The only nature park in Manila, the La Mesa watershed, a thicket about a fifth the size of Paris, wraps around a dam that stores drinking water for the metropolis of 14 million people.