Benguet prosecutor OKs tree poisoning raps vs Baguio firms

BAGUIO CITY –– Testimony provided by three security guards has established the allegedly deliberate poisoning of 45 pine trees last year, prompting the Office of the Benguet Prosecutor to proceed with environmental charges against property owner Gateluck Corp. and employees of a second company, real estate developer Greatzone Enterprises.

“Drilling holes into these pine trees and injecting poisonous substances are acts punishable under the expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System Act and the Baguio Environment Code,” states assistant Benguet prosecutor Sheryl Anne Paoad-Cabantac, in a joint resolution transmitted to the city government on Jan. 31.

The regional prosecutor in La Union province tasked Cabantac to handle the case after the Baguio deputy prosecutor dismissed a complaint filed by Mayor Benjamin Magalong against Gateluck on Aug. 22, 2019.

Magalong and a team climbed down Gateluck’s wooded property along Legarda Road last year to inspect heavily deteriorated trees, which were punctured and filled with a white chemical substance.

A separate complaint filed against Gateluck by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources was also dismissed by the Baguio deputy prosecutor in September last year.

Magalong filed a motion for reconsideration, which includes the Greatzone in the charge sheet following revelations made by their former security guards that three men and several unnamed employees of the developer drilled holes into the trees, which are within the Marcos Highway Forest Reserve.

Gateluck argued that there was no direct evidence linking it nor its officials to the attack on the trees. The property owner also challenged the credibility of the guards, who were dismissed for cause by the Greatzone.

But Cabantac ruled: “The destruction of the pine trees by the sophisticated method of drilling holes into them and then injecting a poisonous substance into these holes is a calculated move [that is] planned and well thought of. The respondents, particularly the officers of Gateluck cannot feign ignorance.”/lzb