PATHWAY | Bamboo stalks are grown along the sides of the pathway of the nursery that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has established inside Mt. Arayat National Park in Arayat, Pampanga, in this photo taken on March 21, 2022. (TONETTE OREJAS / Inquirer Central Luzon)
ARAYAT, Pampanga, Philippines — Imagine the coastlines of Manila Bay, spanning some 190 kilometers, planted with thick, tall bamboo shrubs.
In the case of Pampanga province and the rest of Central Luzon, whose rivers drain to Manila Bay, the possibility of greening the embankments has increased after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in the province and region made a new source of bamboo stalks in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in November 2021.
The DENR’s new nursery sits on a 7,000-square-meter lot inside Mt. Arayat National Park.
Abandoned by the then Bureau of Forestry in the 1980s, it was reclaimed by the DENR in August last year which started developing the nursery in November to propagate 20,000 bamboo stalks every six months, said DENR provincial head Laudemir Salac.
Seed money
Surrounded by tamarind trees and located 74 meters above sea level in Barangay San Juan Baño of Arayat town, the nursery is mildly shaded and flood-free.
Little springs provide irrigation, but an old empty swimming pool is waiting to be converted into a small impounding dam.
So far, P600,000 was spent on developing the project named “Pilot Bamboo Production Nursery,” using the P1-million seed money derived from the Manila Bay rehabilitation program, DENR Regional Executive Director Paquito Moreno said on Thursday.
The provincial DENR has 12 foresters, including Salac, managing the nursery.
“This is the first bamboo nursery in Central Luzon that focuses on stream bank protection. The bamboo planting for the linear parks comes after coastal cleanups,” Salac said.
FORESTERS | These two foresters are among 12 personnel taking care of the bamboo nursery inside Mt. Arayat National Park in Pampanga, in this photo taken on March 21, 2022. (TONETTE OREJAS / Inquirer Central Luzon)
The DENR was one of 13 government agencies ordered by the Supreme Court in a mandamus issued on Dec. 18, 2008, to clean up, rehabilitate and preserve Manila Bay.
According to the high court, the DENR must also restore and maintain its waters to a level fit for swimming, skin diving, and other forms of recreation.
Seventeen main rivers in the Central Luzon provinces of Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Tarlac as well as in Calabarzon’s Cavite, Laguna and Rizal drain to Manila Bay. The Manila Bay area covers eight provinces and 178 local government units in the National Capital Region, Central Luzon and Calabarzon. Its drainage area covers 1,994 square km (199,400 hectares) while its coastline measures about 190 km, the DENR said.
Pampanga Agricultural State University (PSAU), which has maintained a bamboo nursery since 2006, is the DENR’s partner in the nursery, which grows 20 species and multiplies the “bayog” and “tinik” varieties. PSAU has made best practices in bamboo propagation and production that increase survival rate and shelf life, the Department of Science and Technology said in a 2019 report.
Salac said local governments in Pampanga could get bamboo stalks by June this year.
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