DENR files raps vs 3 for Pulag destruction

BAGUIO CITY—Three Benguet farmers were charged this week with destroying sections of Mt. Pulag National Park and building vegetable gardens there early this year, an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said.

Arthur Tampoc, Abelo Miwan and a woman identified only as Mrs. Madino were named in a forestry violation complaint filed on Tuesday by Mt. Pulag park superintendent Emelita Albas in the Benguet provincial prosecutor’s office, said Paquito Moreno, DENR Cordillera director.

The complaint involves damage to the pine forest, spanning
10 hectares, in Barangay Ekip, Bokod town, which was discovered by government foresters in May.

The area is inside land involved in an ownership dispute between the Bokod government and families in neighboring Kabayan town who were granted a certificate of ancestral domain title.

The national park, home to rare plant and animal species, spans about 11,550 ha,
442.9 ha of which lie in Bokod town, 474.1 ha in Buguias town and 8,972.7 ha in Kabayan town, all in Benguet province.

Mt. Pulag also straddles Kayapa town, Nueva Vizcaya province (937.4 ha), and Tinoc town, Ifugao province (722.7 ha).

Lawyer Winston Suaking, of the Benguet prosecutor’s office, said the farmers violated Presidential Decree No. 705, which prohibits the clearing and occupation of forest lands. They also cut trees, which violates the same decree, as well as a log ban imposed by President Aquino.

The prosecutor’s office issued a subpoena on Wednesday, which would be delivered to the farmers in Sitio Naubanan by Bokod police.

Last year, Benguet police also reported to the Regional Law Enforcement Coordinating Council a slash-and-burn operation in the Kabayan section of the national park.

The book, “Biodiversity and Natural Resources Conservation in Protected Areas of Korea and the Philippines,” written by Mt. Pulag experts from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, states that encroaching vegetable farms have gone “well deep into dense upper mossy forests” at elevations of 2,500 meters, making these gardens the real threat to conservation efforts.

This is aggravated by the fact that various agencies issue different land patent documents to legitimize the presence  of indigenous communities there, records showed.

For example, members of a Kabayan community inside the Mt. Pulag reservation were granted certificates of land ownership award by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in the 1990s but these titles could not be enforced because the lands are part of a forest reservation, DAR officials said. Vincent Cabreza and Kimberlie Quitasol, Inquirer Northern Luzon