Environmental Threats from Within and Without: Illegal Logging in Catanduanes

Submitted by junsoriao on Sat, 09/15/2007 - 4:40am

The author salutes the police for discharging their duties, apprehending those responsible for the illegal and rampant cutting of timber and transporting them outside the confines of the province for illegal gain. If the activity remains unrestrained, the results are predictable: the weakening of the top soil that depends on surrounding vegetation and their eventual erosion by the elements, paving the way to avalanches of catasttrophic proportions culminating in death and misery to countless citizens.

The indiscriminate harvesting of timber in those areas where watersheds require reinforcement must stop given the the terrain's vital and fragile link to the surrounding flora and fauna. Henceforth, efforts to render them as virgin forests free from intrusions of all kinds (authorized and illegal logging operations) must be a priority of any provincial government. Stated differently in terms of strategic planning, enacting provincial legislation aimed at enforcing existing preservation laws or putting more teeth to them is one opportunity. These statutes may take any of the following recommendations:

- The recruitment of forest rangers charged with investigating and preventing illegal logging is one approach that should take precedence. This mitigation initiative calls for rigorous police training, introducing them to the methods and practices of advanced nations having similar issues, and ensuring implementation by partnering with the local community.

- Another alternative is to lawfully mandate reforestation at source. What this means is the physical replacement of harvested timber (applies only to authorized logging) by replanting with saplings, nurturing them, and ensuring their propagation through scientific and planned cultivation.

- And thirdly, slash-and-burn (kaingin) farming must be rendered illegal by all means. Farming does not require the desecration of the land by torching and destroying the symbiosis existing between plant, soil, and animal.

We are far from healing the wounds of the earth. But if the national patrimony is but a causa celebre, these initiatives are mere drops in the bucket, yet such are steps in the right direction.

junsoriao
This Side of the Hemisphere

‹ Para ki Bahi