TREE stumps litter the road shoulder of the MacArthur Highway (Manila North Road) in Binalonan town, Pangasinan province. The trees were cut to give way to the ongoing road-widening project from Rosales to Sison towns. WILLIE LOMIBAO/CONTRIBUTOR
LINGAYEN, Pangasinan—The trees along Manila North Road (MNR) that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) had earlier certified as “dying and dead” must first be assessed by independent forestry experts before these are cut, a provincial official said.
Rafael Baraan, provincial administrator, said commissioning the services of these experts to assess the condition of the trees was necessary.
“We cannot put our trust totally in the hands of the DENR and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to cut them, in terms of determining whether … these trees are still alive or already dead,” he said.
In July, the community environment and natural resources office in Urdaneta City wrote the DPWH district office in Rosales town, saying several girdled mahogany trees along the MNR section from Binalonan town to Pozorrubio town are either dying or dead and may pose a danger to motorists, especially during typhoons.
Girdling
Girdling is a process wherein a part of the bark around a tree is removed, preventing nutrients from the roots to reach the upper parts of the tree.
Emmanuel Diaz, DPWH district engineer, immediately sought clearance from the DENR Ilocos regional office to cut the trees but DENR Regional Director Samuel Peñafiel told him to coordinate with the Pangasinan provincial government and seek an exemption from the provincial board, which prohibited tree cutting in the province.
“It’s a valid request. However, like what happened in Cebu province, the trees were declared rotten and dead but it turned out, according to an expert who went there, that the trees were very much alive and can still be allowed to grow again,” Baraan said.
“On that basis, the DENR pronouncements were not reliable,” he said.
Baraan was referring to the 84 trees in two cities and one town in Cebu province that the DENR earlier diagnosed as “diseased and rotting.”
But Dr. Roger Guzman, retired forester and now executive director of the Philippine Federation for Environmental Concerns, said the trees could still be saved.
The provincial board on Monday passed a resolution reiterating its earlier position opposing the cutting of trees along the national highways in Pangasinan province to preserve as many old trees as possible.
The board, however, gave its consent to the cutting of 14 dead trees, but warned the DPWH against felling the more than 700 trees left along MNR, “under pain of severest sanctions.”
“They have respected our request,” Board Member Alfonso Bince said.
Permit
Early this month, the DPWH district office felled two mahogany trees along MNR in Binalonan despite the absence of a tree-cutting permit.
The two trees were among the 21 trees along MNR that the DENR had certified dead.
These are part of the 770 trees that have not been felled yet to give way to the widening of the 42-kilometer stretch of MNR in the towns of Rosales, Villasis, Binalonan, Pozorrubio and Sison and Urdaneta City.
The project required the cutting of 1,829 trees along the highway. But when the tree-cutting permit that the DENR regional office issued to the DPWH expired in February, only 1,059 trees were cut. The DPWH has a pending application for a tree-cutting permit extension at the DENR regional office. Reports from Gabriel Cardinoza and Yolanda Sotelo, Inquirer Northern Luzon