ENVIRONMENT WATCH

Hot logs unearthed on Mt. Sierra Madre

ILAGAN, Isabela – Over a million board feet of illegally-cut trees have been discovered in the heart of the Sierra Madre Mountain here, bolstering reports of rampant illegal logging taking place in one of the country’s remaining but heavily-threatened forest covers.

Gov. Grace Padaca said last week the number of illegally-felled trees in the mountain areas could be 10 times or maybe even a hundred times bigger and were ready to be hauled and transported out from the area by big-time financiers of illegal logging in the province, exploiting the natives there as bugadores or lumber haulers.

“That’s a conservative estimate. It could be 10 times bigger. It’s what I can manage to think. This is way beyond my powers as governor even if I am deputized as environment officer by Environment Secretary Joselito Atienza to arrest and file cases against illegal loggers,” Padaca said.

Padaca, who recently reactivated the provincial government’s anti-illegal logging task force, led a team over the week for an aerial assessment on the extent of damages of the province’s forestlands, especially over San Mariano town, one of the reported illegal logging hot spots here, which also include Jones and San Agustin towns.

The aerial survey was conducted following reports of rampant illegal cutting of trees in the area, part of the vast Sierra Madre biodiversity corridor or the Sierra Madre National Park, a government-protected area, it also being home to some of the world’s most endangered flora and fauna. 

The provincial government task force, also composed of police and Army, in partnership with the Catholic Church’s Ecology Desk, which is being run by the Diocese of Ilagan’s social action apostolate, had already confiscated at least 95,000 board feet of various species of illegally-sourced out forest trees.     

This province still accounts for at least 600,000 of Cagayan Valley’s more than 900,000 hectares of forest lands, which is one of the country’s biggest remaining forest reserves, which also includes the heavily threatened Northern Sierra Madre biodiversity corridor.

With the seized lumber just littered in the provincial capitol and gymnasium, Padaca hopes that Atienza would grant their request for them to auction the said forest products, and that the amount generated from it would be used to provide alternative income sources for poor families, whom illegal loggers have been employing as tree cutters and lumber haulers.

“I know that he (Atienza) will act soon as he has always done on my previous requests. What I asked him to do is (to) order the immediate auction of the 95,000 board feet that the task force has confiscated so we can have something to immediately give as alternative livelihood to displaced barangay folks who are now agitated because they claim they have no more food to eat,” she said.

Earlier, Padaca and Fr. John Couvreur, head of the Church’s ecology desk here, said that “a plan has been hatched to liquidate me (Couvreur) and Gov. Grace Padaca by hired killers because we put in danger the lucrative business of prominent people who are behind the illegal logging activities within the province.”

Couvreur and his group led a one-day hunger strike at the Church compound in San Mariano over the weekend “to show our moral support to the governor and to call national attention of the seriousness of the problem and invite national agencies to assist us in the struggle for the protection of the environment.” -- CL