Amid criticism, DENR pursues antilogging drive in Sierra Madre

LUCENA CITY—Teams from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) have continued scouring the Sierra Madre mountain ranges in Quezon province to seek out illegal loggers amid criticisms from a group that it has failed to stop tree-cutting activities there.

On Friday, the DENR, police and military personnel recovered 80 pieces (1,324 board feet) of abandoned lumber sawn from hardwood species in the mountains of General Nakar town in Quezon, said Miliarete Panaligan, head of community environment and natural resources office based in the neighboring town of Real.

The renewed anti-illegal logging operation last week was met with strong resistance from illegal loggers and their security men, Panaligan said. “One of our teams was fired upon by armed men protecting illegal loggers. Thank God no one was hurt,” she said.

She described the DENR’s task to protect the Sierra Madre as “too risky for the faint-hearted.”

Panaligan also refuted an Inquirer report on the return of illegal logging operations in the Sierra Madre but admitted that illegal loggers might have taken advantage of her recent absence when she took an official leave for one and a half months.

Last month, Zander Bautista, assistant executive director of Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance (SSMNA), reported the return of illegal logging in the mountains of General Nakar.

Bautista took photos of several piles of illegally cut lumber in the mountain trails, rivers and a shack. He also saw illegal loggers in the act of processing trees toppled by chainsaws.

Citing his interviews with Agta natives and other mountain dwellers, Bautista learned that businessmen from lowland areas had been hiring them as workers in the illegal logging trade.

Panaligan invited the group of Fr. Pete Montallana, SSMNA chair, to a dialogue on the reported resurgence of illegal logging in the Sierra Madre, but the Franciscan priest asked her instead to focus her efforts on how to stop these activities.

“She should concentrate … on the ground to stop the rape of the Sierra Madre. She should not waste her time with us,” Montallana said by telephone interview on Saturday.

Citing his group’s past experiences, he said most meetings with the DENR on environmental concerns had often ended with “self-serving press releases from the government.”

“Most of the meetings and dialogues were useless,” he said.

But Panaligan said her agency’s campaign against illegal logging was successful, noting that she was able to stop these activities by uniting groups of Agta natives. Montallana dismissed the claim.

“The tribe has long been united even before she came. The Agta has its own indigenous practices on how to unite the tribe,” the priest said.

Panaligan said the DENR has been providing alternative livelihood to mountain dwellers through the National Greening Program (NGP). Under the program, 1.5 billion trees are to be planted in 1.5 million hectares of land in the country until June this year, when President Aquino’s term ends.

In a DENR audit report in 2013, however, the Commission on Audit described the NGP as “unsuccessful.”

Montallana said the program’s budget had turned into a “fat milking cow of … corruption.” He did not elaborate.