P70 million allotted for Cordillera forest rehab

By Dexter A. See

BAGUIO CITY – At least P70 million has been included in this year’s P1.645-trillion national budget to reforest denuded watersheds in the Cordillera to sustain the region’s identity as the watershed cradle of Northern Luzon.

Clarence Baguilat, regional director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said funds will be used to expand the implementation of the Upland Development Program (UDP) in which families will be tapped to maintain a portion of watersheds in order to contribute to reforesting the denuded mountains.

For the past two years, at least 9,000 hectares of critical watersheds were planted with trees by families chosen to be beneficiaries of the UDP which is part of the interventions crafted by the national government upon the intercession of the Regional Development Council in the Cordillera for reforestation.

With the additional budget this year, Baguilat said 1,500 families from the provinces of Abra, Apayao, Benguet, Ifugao, Kalinga and Mountain Province will benefit from the program.

More or less 1,000 hectares of denuded mountains will be reforested while another 500 hectares of river banks will be converted into bamboo plantations to help ensure steady supply of water for lowland communities even during the dry season.

Under the program, each family will plant and maintain at least one hectare of barren mountains and they will be given P24,000 for a period of three years in order to make their plantations successful.

Baguilat added the concept of the program is agro-forestry so that the beneficiaries will be able to harvest the fruits of their labor to augment their income from other sources.

Earlier, the RDC called on government and private sectors to help in reforesting denuded mountains to sustain the region’s identity as the source of water being used for irrigation, industrial and domestic purposes by lowland communities.

The DENR noted substantial gains in initial stages of implementation of the UDP, citing there was good indication effects of the program would be felt three to five years when planted trees in the identified critical watershed areas have grown and started serving their purpose.

Based on DENR records, at least one-third of the region’s 1.8 hectares land area need to be reforested within the next several years so water will continuously flow down 13 major river systems supplying water to vast tracks of agricultural lands in the Cagayan Valley, Ilocos and Central Luzon.