[4] Its scaly body and legs are a blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots, while its tail is marked in alternating segments of black and green.

[2] The diet of the Northern Sierra Madre forest monitor is reliant on the fruit of Pandan palm trees and Canarium.

[8] As a result it is likely an important seed disperser of these plants, but particularly of Canarium, because the consumption of its fruit by monitors of the subgenus Philippinosaurus is an unusual adaptation amongst vertebrates, being able to detoxify the high levels of secondary compounds such as calcium oxalate which otherwise makes digestion difficult.

9147 9 (with indigenous peoples being exceptions to this rule), the hunting of monitor lizards for personal consumption, the bushmeat market, and the pet trade is widespread and largely uncontrolled.

[2] Selective logging of the dipterocarp forests in which it lives forces it to shelter in smaller trees instead, rending them more visible and more vulnerable to hunting.

[9] The first record of this species being illegally captured for sale in the pet trade occurred in 2012, when an 1.7 metre long adult was listed on social media at an asking price of ₱ 100,000 PHP ($2,380 USD).