138 girdled trees in road project now dead

ROSALES, Pangasinan—The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) said 138 of 770 trees spared from the Manila North Road (MNR) widening project have been found dead.

District Engineer Emmanuel Diaz said the dead trees, many of them girdled, now pose a danger to motorists and would need to be cleared.

He said they learned about the dead trees from an inventory report presented by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) during a recent meeting.

“That is a drastic rise from 21 dead trees that the DENR reported in July,” he said.

DPWH had applied for an extension of the permit to cut 1,829 trees standing in the way of the MNR widening project. The permit lapsed in February before the DPWH and its contractors could cut the remaining 770 trees.

But environmental groups asked a court in Urdaneta City to issue an environmental protection order to spare the surviving trees. The groups were outraged by the girdling of the trees marked for cutting.

During a March session of the Pangasinan provincial board, a DENR official said girdling, or the process of peeling off a section of a tree’s trunk to prevent nutrients from reaching its branches, violated the provisions of the tree-cutting permit.

“We did not expect the girdling to happen,” said Leduina Co, provincial environment and natural resources officer.

But neither DPWH nor its contractor were charged. DPWH has also not provided any explanation as to why it girdled the condemned trees.

Diaz said they have asked the court to allow the DPWH to remove the dead trees, saying they could not do it unilaterally due to the environmental complaint and a provincial board resolution that stopped the cutting of trees along the MNR.

On Aug. 26, the provincial government, government agencies and environmental groups signed an agreement which said that the surviving trees may be spared, except for those with “no more chance of survival.”

In September, a tree surgery expert commissioned by the DENR Ilocos regional office observed that the girdled trees have not been attended to since February and may have no chance of survival.

The controversy has not stopped the MNR project, said Diaz. “But [the work] is now concentrated in sections where no trees will have to be cut,” he said.

“The latest instruction from [Public Works] Secretary [Rogelio] Singson is to pursue the project while we wait for a win-win solution regarding the trees,” Diaz said.

“If in the near future the controversy on the tree cutting is resolved, the project will be completed by 2016,” said Diaz.

Although the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEx) is being constructed parallel to the MNR, widening of the road from two lanes to four lanes is still needed, he said.

“TPLEx will have a very significant effect in reducing traffic along MNR, because interregional travelers will use the TPLEx. But at the moment, the volume of traffic on the MNR is already way beyond its threshold,” he said. Gabriel Cardinoza, Inquirer Northern Luzon