Bicol forest products come with green tags
There’s an urgent green message entwined in the bags, vases and other handicraft products woven by poor families in Barangay Tuaca in Basud, Camarines Norte: Save the Bicol National Park (BNP).
Tuaca lies next to the BNP, a protected forest nearing death due to rampant illegal logging and charcoal production. The park is also called the Bitukang Manok (chicken gut) because a zigzag of the Maharlika Highway winds through it.
It is home to the “Mother Tree,” which the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Bicol has certified as about 440 years old. The red lauan (Shorea negrosensis) tree measures 27 meters high and 2.2 meters in diameter, and is two kilometers from the national highway.
Environmental experts have deemed the BNP, a 57-square-kilometer expanse established in 1930 and straddling the two Camarines provinces, as a “vanishing treasure” amid unabated forest destruction.
Most of the barangay residents had lived inside the BNP until they were relocated in 2001 and virtually stripped of their livelihoods—mainly logging and charcoal-making. Later, as their only option, they were persuaded to engage in handicraft production using non-timber forest products.
The municipality now sees the need to inculcate in people’s minds that there is money in handicraft-making, lest they return to their old ways and contribute to the denudation of the BNP.
Avelino Zapanta Sr., 62, a councilor of Tuaca who used to live on the fringes of the park in Barangay Alanao of Lupi town, was among those encouraged to create baskets and vases out of lamon, a fern species growing in abundance in the village, especially on the BNP’s bald spots.
“I have been into handicraft-making since 1994, when I moved out of Alanao, after it had lost its forest. There is little income from it, but it has sustained us for long. We weave handicrafts instead of going into the forest (to cut trees),” Zapanta says.
Like other villagers, he laments that he has little capital and his products have an unstable market. To augment his meager income, he teaches handicraft-making to other people.
But transforming himself into a strong believer in the preservation of the BNP, Zapanta has no plans of exploiting the trees again for money.
Years ago, he says, he risked his life defending an employee of the DENR from irate loggers in the BNP. He suffered a hack wound in the body.
There is heightened fear that some villagers are again into logging and charcoal-making following the successive arrests of loggers and charcoal-makers within and around the BNP since January.
One of those taken in January was Zapanta’s son, Avelino Jr., who was caught by policemen cutting a tree with a chainsaw just a kilometer from the Mother Tree. He has been detained at the municipal jail while his family tries to raise money for his bail.
Zapanta claims that his son was just gathering lamon for the family’s handicraft business and pleads to authorities to drop the illegal logging case against him.
On the same month also, illegally cut trees have been seized by police and DENR personnel in Basud and neighboring San Lorenzo Ruiz town. In January alone, the DENR in Camarines Norte says logging destroyed about P500,000 worth of trees in the park.
Jose Boticario, Basud environment and natural resources officer, says the municipality has invested part of its meager resources in community organizing and livelihood programs to sustain the interest of villagers in handicraft-making.
“They need alternative sources of income and handicraft-making is the answer,” he says.
DOST assistance
The local government has sought the help of the Department of Science in Technology in providing technical assistance to the residents of Tuaca, Caayunan and San Pascual, who were found to be heavily dependent on forest products, so they can find alternative sources of income.
With the heavy forest loss, Boticario says the municipal government has stopped issuing tree-cutting and charcoal-making permits.
He points to a 2009 report by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom and the European Forest Institute, which stated that only 7.6 square kilometers of “the original grandeur” of the BNP remains.
Boticario recalls that 28 years ago, one could feel the cool air while passing through the Bitukang Manok. “Now, it is not the case,” he says.
Basud is pinning its hope to save Bicol’s vanishing treasure to the national greening program of the Aquino administration. On Jan. 10, the DENR released P6 million for the “urgent” reforestation of the BNP.
Tree-planting drive
Boticario says the municipal government, for its part, has been promoting tree-planting activities, especially along riverbanks. “Residents should realize that when you plant a tree, you help a life,” he says.
Gov. Edgardo Tallado says the ban on logging in the BNP is non-negotiable. The park is a watershed area supplying potable water to Balud and the other towns of Camarines Norte.
Until a sizable market is found for the village-produced handicrafts, destruction of the remaining forest of the BNP will continue, officials say.
Motorists who pass through the Bitukang Manok from early evening until midnight may see some residents, some of them children, who hail vehicles and sell charcoal at P120 per sack.
