ILOILO CITY—Authorities are investigating the cutting of trees inside a reforestation area in a town in Iloilo.
Julian Amador, Western Visayas head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), said a regional task force is gathering evidence against those involved in tree-cutting in a reforestation area in Calinog town.
Police, officials of the Department of Interior and Local Government, and soldiers are helping in the investigation as members of the task force.
Amador said DENR would file administrative and criminal cases against those behind the tree-cutting and seize vehicles and equipment.
The task force last week seized 7,000 board feet of cut trees in the 736-hectare Jalaur reforestation project in Barangay Alibunan in Calinog, some 53 kilometers north of this city.
Levi Duran, DENR regional technical director for forest management services, said in a phone interview that the market value of the seized timber could reach P175,000.
The DENR received information on the cutting of trees in the reforestation area last week, which prompted the raid. But no one was caught during the operation and the cut trees were apparently abandoned, according to Duran.
The seized pieces of timber were brought to the headquarters of the Army’s 61st Infantry Battalion.
The Jalaur reforestation project is part of a program to rehabilitate the Jalaur water basin, the main water source for the irrigation of agricultural lands in Iloilo.
Duran said the reforestation area was secured by forest guards but there were too few guards to cover the entire area.
In Murcia town, Negros Occidental, three forest fires destroyed several trees in Barangay Minoyan, about 15 kilometers east of Bacolod City.
Local officials suspected arson, saying the fires may have been started by people who wanted to occupy the reforestation area.
“We will arrest those responsible and arson charges will be filed against them,” said Jose Ma. Valencia, chief of staff of Gov. Alfredo Maranon Jr.
He said authorities were working together to put out the blaze.
President Aquino has issued an executive order banning all forms of commercial logging in the country, but loggers continued to defy the order.
Logging continues in some of the most threatened forests in the country, including in Sierra Madre and the forests of Lanao del Sur.
The Dec. 17 disaster that struck the northern Mindanao cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan had been blamed largely on unabated tree-cutting in Lanao del Sur that unleashed hundreds of logs at the height of flooding in the two cities. With a report from Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas