Aquino declares day for Sierra Madre but OKs dam projects

ILLEGALLY cut logs from the Sierra Madre await transport on the shore of Infanta town, Quezon province, in 2012. Illegal logging on the mountain range continues.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TANGGOL KALIKASAN

LUCENA CITY, Philippines—Two years after President Benigno Aquino III declared Sept. 26 every year as Save Sierra Madre Day, the longest mountain range in the country continues to face threats from illegal logging and even government projects, according to groups advocating the preservation of the Sierra Madre.

Christine Paladin, chair of Southern Tagalog for Environmental Development and Protection-Sierra Madre, said Mr. Aquino’s Proclamation No. 413, declaring Sept. 26 of every year as Sierra Madre Day, was but a hollow gesture.

She said the declaration was being contradicted even by the government, which is building several dams and water supply projects that she said threaten the mountain.

One of these threats, she said, is the New Centennial Water Source project that would tap water through two proposed dams—Kaliwa and Laiban— that are in Tanay town, Rizal province, and General Nakar town, Quezon province.

Paladin listed the other threats as the proposed Kanan Dam, Agos Dam and Sumag Diversion Project, which are also in General Nakar. Another is Sierra Madre Water Corp. Multi Hydropower (Bulk Water Project) in Real town, Quezon.

“The dams, which are all clustered in northern Quezon, are harmful and destructive to nature,” Paladin said in a statement.

Sierra Madre is a mountain range that starts in the province of Cagayan and ends in the province of Quezon, just east of Laguna de Bay.

Mr. Aquino, in his State of the Nation Address in July, said the dam projects on the Sierra Madre were among several public-private partnership programs that he had approved for immediate implementation.

The dam projects would tap water from Agos River on the Sierra Madre to supply Metro Manila with potable water.

Aside from the dam threats, illegal logging on the mountain continues unabated.

On Aug. 22, law enforcers from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources seized illegally cut narra and kamagong flitches with an estimated market price of P1 million in the coastal town of Mauban, Quezon.

Authorities said the logs came from the Sierra Madre in Isabela province and were transported to Mauban, a known transshipment point of illegally cut forest products.

Elizabeth Carranza, head of Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance, in a phone interview, said logging on the Sierra Madre was being overshadowed by protests against tree cutting by the Department of Public Works and Highways for its road-widening projects across the country.

Ramcy Astoveza, chief of the Agta tribe in northern Quezon, appealed anew for a stop to the destruction of the tribe’s natural habitat.

Dam opponents have expressed fear that rainforest areas that are home to endemic and endangered species would be flooded if the dam projects push through.