Unabated coal-making ravages forest in Camarines Sur
NAGA CITY—The shrill sound of the chain saw that filled the air can be a dirge to the trees, chopped and baked in dugouts on the slopes of a desolate mountain in the village of Pinamihagan in Lagonoy, Camarines Sur, where charcoal-makers fell hundreds of trees to earn meager income.
Cristobal (not his real name) says he makes at least 28 sacks of charcoal from 300 trees with trunks about a half foot in diameter.
He sells charcoal for P80 per sack which traders sell for P180 per sack to end users. In short, Cristobal’s total income of P2,240 is less than the net profit of P2,800 that the trader earns.
Cristobal’s earning is only 12.44 percent of the budget that the Aquino administration’s National Greening Program provides to plant trees. Under the program, P60 is allocated per tree seedling. This means that the government will spend P18,000 to replace the 300 trees cut down by charcoal-makers and sold for less than P3,000.
Cristobal says he has to earn cash to feed his brood of eight because the coconut harvest this year had been very bad for the small plantation he maintains somewhere down the mountain where they live.
Cristobal says he has a regular buyer.
It takes him a week to cut the trees, gather and cut trunks and branches to pieces. It takes another week to bake these into charcoal.
Around the place where the trees had been cleared, Cristobal plants fruit-bearing trees and coconuts.
From a distance, it looks like slash-and-burn patches of second-growth forest.
The place is a wasteland with hundreds of tree stumps, some burned, jutting irregularly across the mountain. About four groups of charcoal-makers have claimed their own territories defined by makeshift shelters of blue tarpaulins that dot the mountainside.
Pinamihagan is a remote village of Lagonoy, 91 km northeast of Naga City, with 330 households and a population of about 2,000 who mainly depend on coconut and rice farming for their livelihood.
However, many households rely on charcoal-making since chromite mining operation stopped a year ago, according to village councilman Charlie Laurenciano.
Laurenciano says village officials like him are aware that charcoal-making is bad for the environment but they cannot stop the charcoal-makers unless they get other jobs.
