Trees left standing doomed to die

FR. ROBERT Reyes takes a closer look at a tree stump on the site of a road widening project on MacArthur Highway in Pangasinan province. WILLIE LOMIBAO/CONTRIBUTOR

BINALONAN, Pangasinan—Trees that have been left standing on the route of a road expansion project for a major highway here are doomed to die after they have been girdled, a procedure that a forestry expert says is like “removing their veins.”

Dr. Roger Guzman, executive director of the Philippine Federation of Environmental Concern, said girdling, or removing a strip of bark around the tree trunk, would stop the flow of nutrients from the ground to the leaves.

“The trees will have no chance of survival,” said Guzman. “It’s just like removing their veins, practically depriving them of nutrients from the soil,” he said.

Guzman was here on Thursday with so-called “running priest” Fr. Robert Reyes and members of Green Convergence, an environmental coalition of 50 organizations.

Reyes ran on MacArthur Highway to protest the cutting of 1,829 trees for a government road widening project in five towns and Urdaneta City in Pangasinan province.

At least 500 trees lining the highway have not been cut after the contractor’s tree-cutting permit expired this month.

Guzman said the contractors should not have resorted to girdling since not all the trees could be cut within the 90-day tree-cutting permit issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

He said the girdling could have been done to kill the trees slowly and justify the contractors’ request to extend the tree-cutting permit.

“Once the tree dries up and it becomes dead, it will have to be removed because it’s already useless. So again, it’s very pathetic,” he said.

The contractors’ tree-cutting permit, issued on Nov. 4 last year (not Nov. 14 as the DENR provincial office earlier said), expired on Feb. 4.

The contractors have requested for an extension but Angelina Galang, Green Convergence president, has asked the DENR regional office to deny the request.

In a meeting with community environment and natural resources officer Fernando Estrada in Urdaneta City, Guzman said some trees were cut, even if these were outside the boundary of the road widening project.

Guzman said a condition in the contract specified that the tree should be earth-balled for transfer to another site.

“Some of those already girdled should have been earth-balled. These are not 50-or 100-year-old trees. But I did not see any indication that even a single tree was balled and transferred,” he said.

At the meeting, Father Reyes said the government was implementing policies that contradict each other, citing the National Greening Program (NGP) as an example.

The NGP seeks to plant millions of trees to reforest vast denuded areas of the country until President Aquino’s term ends in 2016.

“But now, trees are being killed in Pangasinan. I cannot understand the NGP, if this is true and sincere. Does the DENR realize the value of an 80- or 100-year-old tree?” said Reyes. Gabriel Cardinoza, Inquirer Northern Luzon