A fireless month

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March Fianza

Talking to forester friends in the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources  last week, I found out that there was in the late 70s a helicopter that was assigned as part of their “quick response” program to fighting forest fires that recur during summer months. For qualified reasons, dispatching the helicopter where a forest fire is razing vegetation on a mountain somewhere was stopped. It was observed that everytime the chopper came by to unload firefighters, children from a nearby village were already at the scene of the fire and that put their young lives in danger.

As a young boy I remember skipping out from the classroom just to get close to a helicopter that was about to land on the open field. That, I think, was exactly what the young mountain boys had in mind – to witness a chopper land in front of their protruding eyes. But what was bad as reported was that the innocent kids in few instances purposely put the bushes ablaze and waited for the choppers to come.

Forest fires in the Cordillera and in many mountainous regions in the country is a serious problem. And the problem being encountered by concerned government agencies is that unabated man-made causes such as the kaingin system of agriculture has aggravated it. The kaingin system is the utilization of fire for mountain agriculture and grazing. The Cordillera mountain ranges are covered by a largely pure pine forest. Its forest map has been forced to have another shape. This was because the increase in population in parallel called for an increase for residential settlements, agricultural space, grazing land areas.

All these have compounded the El Niño phenomenon that was already a problem that had no probable solution. In fact, forest fires are an everyday scene in forested mountains of Benguet, Kalinga and Mountain Province that are occupied by pioneering vegetable farmers. The other causes of forest fires are lightning discharges and natural combustion blamed on the hot weather. If forests fires in many forests occur at the same time, how can these be fought when the government in addition to community volunteers is short on forest guards?

Recently we were informed that around 530 “former” CPLA (Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army) cadres will be hired by the government as forest guards. Each forest guard will receive a monthly pay of P8,000. They will be hired for the remaining time of 2014 for at least nine months, from April to December. I understand the money to pay the “former” CPLAs was already included in the DENR budget so that it is this agency that will take care of disbursing the funds. But the screening of the forest guards, according to informants, will be done by the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process or OPAPP.

While the idea of integrating “former rebels” into the fold of the law is welcome, although a not so bright idea, it raises the fact that forest protection and fighting forest fires in the region has been tied with volunteerism. No money was involved then, except that concerned villages were aware that they only have themselves to blame if their immediate environment was unprotected from fires. The sure-fire effect of doling out money to the hiring of questionable forest guards is that the ordinary volunteer who has been acting out his role as a useful citizen to his village, even while let us say that he has been receiving something like P3,000 to P5,000; becomes resentful and may get the feeling of lowliness.

I am strongly swayed that employing “former” rebels as forest guards will be a way to waste people’s money. In the same way that I believe that there were no CPLAs in Benguet. The better way to fighting forest fires, I think, is to divert the money to well-meaning volunteers that are community based. Certainly too, with newly hired “forest guards” awash with easy money in the months to come, we will be seeing an increase of regular customers in backstreet bars. – ozram.666@gmail.com