Dying forests

Editorial

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:16:00 02/08/2011

Thousands of years ago, when the first humans arrived in the Philippines from Asia, they found an archipelago that was rich in natural resources, researcher Lawrence R. Heany of the Field Museum of Chicago said. The land was covered almost entirely by rain forest that provided the people with meat from wildlife, building materials and clear water.

Over the years, the people squandered the natural resources by overuse, mismanagement and greed. After more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, rain forest still covered about 70 percent of the country. After some time, Cebu, Bohol, Panay and other Visayan islands became badly deforested. Vast areas of Luzon and Mindanao also lost a lot of their forests. In 1992, old-growth rain forest had declined to 8.6 percent and was estimated to have further dropped to 7 percent in 1997. Heany said the Philippines’ forest decline from 70 percent to 7 percent in less than a century “is probably the most rapid and severe in the world.”

Now we are literally reaping the whirlwind of that overuse, mismanagement, corruption and greed. The nation is experiencing worse floods and droughts, massive erosion, loss of topsoil, landslides, silted streams, coral reef and mangrove destruction, groundwater depletion and the near extinction of endangered flora and fauna. All because of severe deforestation.

Alarmed by the death and destruction caused by floods and landslides in Eastern Visayas and Southern Luzon, President Benigno Aquino III has ordered a ban on the cutting and harvesting of timber. But it is not enough to have a moratorium on logging. A massive, nationwide reforestation program has to be undertaken to reverse the alarming slide of the country to severe deforestation.

The President has ordered the creation of an Anti-Logging Task Force to enforce the moratorium. But the government forces are terribly undermanned; the few forest rangers we have cannot adequately police large areas of forests that are the target of loggers out to make a fast buck at the expense of the environment.

The people will have to pitch in and help enforce the ban on logging. They can do what some groups in Bukidnon province did many years ago: stop the loggers who cut down trees and even lie down in the path of trucks carrying the logs down to the plains. Or do what some grassroots organizations are doing: tree spiking, which is simply driving nails into the trunks of trees, destroying the hated chainsaws and making it extremely dangerous for loggers to cut down trees. A concerted effort by government and the people should effectively stop deforestation.