ENVIRONMENTAL UPDATE

Regreening Kapangan
GLO A. TUAZON

KAPANGAN, Benguet -- The once pristine mountains of Barangay Central and Pongayan here are still as green, but from way below the profusion of trees are missing, just the flat rolling green of leaves carpeting hectares of land.

Gone are the canopies of tall, mature trees that once paraded proudly atop these mountains, supplying both shade and water and preventing the erosion of soil at the same time. In their place are sayote plantations, expanding now and then and the cutting down and burning of trees are rampant.

The municipal officials of Kapangan headed by environment and natural resources committee chairman and vice mayor Lauro C. Lorenzo finally sought a solution to stop the further expansion of the sayote plantations and had the program implemented by councilor Manny E. Fermin.

The theme: "Regreening Kapangan For a Cleaner Future".

As much as they understand the plight of farmers to make money out of it, the problem remains that with every tree gone, the life cycle of the forests are gone with it. As cited Fermin, the problem may not be as serious now but give it a few months or years and it will be uncontrollable.

He added that for humanitarian reasons, they took the matter at hand on a barangay level, settling it amicably. A computation of the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources reportedly bared if the total trees cut down exceeded its worth of 20,000, a person could go to jail for 15 years.

The reforestation program was a joint project of the Kapangan municipal government DENR and of Caltex Good Roots.

Foresters and Agriculturists from the government and Caltex Good Roots took turns lecturing on advantages of putting back trees in these highlands.

To start the project, Kapangan bought 4,050 seedlings worth P50,000 from Caltex Good Roots, to be distributed to the landowners and farmers affected by the expanded sayote plantations.

They came in assortments of pine, citrus, a little narra and eucalyptus. It was explained that since the areas affected were part of the watershed, diversified reforesting was advisable -- planting of different species of trees for better water retention. The agriculturists said species that should be planted are those that couldn’t be logged.

Municipal and barangay officials of the two affected barangays earlier met landowners and farmers to settle their differences thus, the solution.

On Oct. 8, they affixed their signatures in the memorandum of agreement. The seedlings were divided soon after for the tree planting.