Commercial farmers encroach on forests, say DENR officials
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 07:58:00 05/12/2008
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines--COMMERCIAL FARMERS are now encroaching on old-growth forests around Benguet and Ifugao despite an agreement with government agencies prohibiting them from these zones.
Joel Behis, chief of the regional Department of Environment and Natural Resources division on protected areas and wildlife conservation, said farming intrusion into forest lands had become common in the Cordillera.
Behis said he feared the food crisis might be used to rationalize many of these encroachments.
"By law, they are not permitted to burn forests. But they are tolerated in the community, and no one is willing to turn them in when we come to stop the kaingin (slash and burn farming)," Behis said.
But the community has also agreed to keep the encroachments in check.
Between 1989 and 1994, the Ibaloi and Kalanguya peoples of Benguet launched a crusade to protect wildlife areas from the expansion of vegetable farms. Among these areas are the 8,125-hectare reservation covering Mount Pulag, the highest peak in Luzon, and the 5,512-hectare mountain reserve of Mt. Data.
Complaints
But the DENR, since March, has been receiving complaints of unauthorized road constructions and kaingin activities around Pulag.
On Saturday, the Inquirer captured on film how 10 Kabayan residents burned more than two hectares of mossy forest near Barangay Ballay that acts as a watershed for Lake Tabeyo. The forest is at the foot of Pulag.
A 2003 DENR inventory of the Pulag reservation showed that foresters managed to keep settlement and farm areas contained inside 1,236 ha, to protect 2,109 ha of old pine forests; about 2,000 ha of second-growth forests; and 2,578 ha of mossy forests.
According to the National Statistical and Coordination Board, old-growth forests are areas where timber has not been harvested. Second-growth forests are regenerated forests (where trees are planted to replace a harvested area), while mossy forests are those located in mountainous or high elevation land and are, therefore, considered rare.
The Pulag reservation is shared by Kabayan, Buguias and Bokod towns in Benguet; Kayapa in Nueva Vizcaya; and Tinoc in Ifugao. Some forests and rice terraces have given way to farmlands developed by Benguet farmers.
Data, however, has lost more forest to farms, and had been a hot spot of territorial disputes in Benguet.
Falling forest cover
The inventory showed that 4,611 ha of the Data reservation is settled and farmed. Forest cover has been reduced to 639 ha.
Environmentalists have criticized the government for allowing the mountain's desecration, forcing the DENR and the Department of Agriculture to agree to share resources in fighting kaingin and encroachment there.
But officials of these agencies were uncertain if the agreement could still be enforced.
Susan Balanza, DA Cordillera planning officer, said the agency had anticipated that high food demand could spark a problem with conservationists, and had completed a master plan aimed at encouraging the revival of abandoned and idle lands in the region to discourage forest depletion.
She said the DA and the DENR had been participating in a resource and policy convergence program to encourage agroforestry in forestlands where indigenous peoples live.
Encroachment is sometimes the community's only resort when their farmlands are no longer profitable, Balanza said.
"But that is what we are trying to teach them. There are certain types of soil that cannot sustain vegetable or rice farms for a long time," she said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon
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