Aquino asked to certify log ban bill as urgent

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje has asked President Benigno Aquino to certify as urgent proposed legislation that would put a stop to all forms of logging in natural forests.

Paje made the recommendation as the country struggles with the effects of deforestation after a series of heavy rains and storms devastated parts of Visayas and Mindanao.

Environmentalists decried deforestation in the mountains of Mindanao, saying it magnified the effects of Tropical Storm “Sendong.”

Rains brought by Sendong, which hit northern Mindanao a week before Christmas, triggered landslides and flash floods that all but wiped out the cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. The death toll in the two cities was projected to reach 2,000.

Legislating a log ban would give the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and other agencies “more teeth” against illegal loggers, Paje said.

Mr. Aquino had issued an executive order banning logging in primary forests which, Paje said, was a way to bypass Congress where previous attempts to pass measures to ban logging have failed.

A log ban law, he said, would “set in stone” rules to protect Philippine forests and would outlive the Aquino administration.

The President’s log ban executive order appears to be lightly enforced as shown by thousands of logs that were carried by the floods and which were blamed for many of the deaths in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro.

The Philippines used to have one of the world’s lushest tropical forests. According to the DENR, of the country’s total land area of 30 million hectares, around 53 percent is forest land.

Over the years, logging, mining and the encroachment of human settlements have reduced the country’s forest cover.

Based on 2001-2003 satellite surveys, the country’s total forest cover is estimated at 7.168 million ha, or 24.27 percent of the total land area. The remaining 8 million hectares are lands that are unproductive, open, denuded or degraded, the DENR said.