The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has advised more than 2,000 foresters and upland farmers in Central Luzon to help protect the region’s 589,945 hectares of forests from wildfires this summer.
Philex Mining Corp. is again being held to account, this time by government foresters, over a road that it allegedly built through a Benguet watershed without first securing the proper clearances, like an environmental compliance certificate (ECC).
Residents in the farming village of Villa Sur in Maddela, Quirino, were shocked when news broke out at daybreak on New Year’s Day that gunshots they heard an hour past midnight killed Alfredo Almueda, the highest-ranking officer of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Maddela and nearby Nagtipunan town.
Mayor Annaliza Gonzales-Kwan of Guiuan, Eastern Samar, has been charged at the “Green Ombudsman” with violating environmental laws for illegally cutting and destroying mangroves in her town without permits from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
Environment Undersecretary Demetrio Ignacio Jr. said better security for forest rangers and other people tasked with stopping illegal logging would be in place, following the Jan. 1 murder of community environment and natural resources officer Alfredo Almueda Jr. in Maddela, Quirino.
Most people in the mountain village of Tongonan in Ormoc City have given up the ways of the “kainginero” (slash-and-burn farmers) to become forest guardians.
Forest trees are now being cloned in Central Luzon through a nursery at the foot of Mount Arayat here so the region can grow quality trees for its share in the National Greening Program and for the timber needs of industries, environment officials said on Thursday.
Saying it’s not enough that illegal log shipments are being apprehended, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje has created two teams to go after illegal loggers in Mindanao and look into the possible participation of his own personnel into the matter.
Quezon officials on Monday declared a mangrove tree-planting campaign of the provincial government as a success.
Charcoal production and commercial fishponds are being tagged as among the major causes of the depletion of mangrove trees in Quezon’s coastal areas.
The onset of the rainy season this month has stopped environment officials from retrieving logs from illegally cut trees in the Pangasinan-Zambales mountains.
Using a guidebook authored by the late botanist Leonard Co, students, environment advocates and government officials trekked for 40 kilometers across the caldera of Mount Natib from Orani to Morong in Bataan recently.
When Rene “Tatay Ite” Vendiola saw the photos of trees lost to illegal logging and “kaingin,” he made a silent promise to create a mini-forest to give back what he took away when he was into slash-and-burn farming.
