Climate change doing wonders for Mt Prov

BONTOC, Mountain Province – Unlike other places in the country which are now suffering negative effects of climate change through massive landslides, flashfloods among others, this province is now benefitting from unpredictable weather condition, especially continuous daily afternoon rains.

Gov. Leonard G. Mayaen said most parts of the province are now realizing the benefits of climate change because the continuous rains have maintained the moisture of the soil that resulted to non-occurrence of forest fires first quarter of this year.

“Due to the continuous daily afternoon rains, our people are also able to plant assorted trees in identified critical watershed areas and contribute to the national greening program of the Aquino administration,” Mayaen said.

He added lack of forest fires was a great improvement compared to last year’s dozens of forest fires that ruined hundreds of hectares of forests in the province.

According to him, newly planted trees can easily survive with the current weather condition prevailing in the province, thus, they will be able to help bring back the forest canopy of barren mountains in a shorter period of time since there are no forest fires that often result to the untimely death of the trees.

Last year, Mayaen disclosed over 500,000 assorted tree seedlings were planted in around 2,000 hectares of watersheds and forests all over the province and that the same is almost triple than the prescribed quota imposed by the concerned government agencies tasked to implement the NGP.

“We want to sustain our momentum to bring back the greenery of our mountains through the active participation of our people. We want to make them feel the importance of preserving and protecting our forests for the benefit of the present and future generations,” Mayaen said.

Her added the provincial government will also increase the hiring of forest guards to be deployed all over the province to help maintain the zero fire incidents and assist in the regreening efforts.

Further, Mayaen ordered massive production of tree seedlings in all public and private nurseries located in the ten municipalities so that around one million tree seedlings will be produced which could be subsequently planted in the identified critical watersheds to boost the province’s compliance to the NGP requirements for the coming years.

Currently, around 60 percent of the province’s 150,000-hectare land area remains to be forested making it the most forested province in the region.

However, Mayaen said there was constant need to remind people, especially today’s youth, to take care of the environment since Mountain Province serves as one of the sources of water flowing into the major river systems in Northern Luzon thereby providing abundant supply for agriculture, domestic, industrial and power generations purposes. – Dexter A. See