A forest ranger inspects illegally sawn lumber left at a section of the Sierra Madre mountains in northern Quezon. — CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
LUCENA CITY—Government forest guards in the Sierra Madre mountain ranges in Quezon province, have appealed to President Duterte to provide them with firearms to defend themselves against illegal loggers.
“We know [the] President can understand the personal risk involved in our line of work,” Rexner Telan, a forest ranger, from the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) in Real town, said on Thursday.
He cited an instance when armed men working for illegal loggers shot his group during an operation along the Marikina-Infanta Highway in Infanta town on Feb. 9.
“We ran after them but we backed out when we saw that they were armed,” he said.
Telan said they were used to the harsh conditions in the Sierra Madre. “But the growing aggressiveness of armed men working for big-time illegal loggers … worries us,” he said.
Telan said he could not afford a gun because he was receiving only P12,000 a month. “Our only hope is President Duterte,” he added.
Antilogging operations
During anti-illegal logging operations that normally lasted a week, forest guards were only equipped with a camera, global positioning system device, binoculars and solar-powered lights for documentation.
Oftentimes, these operations were not assisted by government troops to avoid clashes with communist rebels known to be operating in parts of Sierra Madre.
Miliarete Panaligan, Cenro chief in Real, supported the forest rangers’ appeal for firearms. Ten forest guards work under her office.
“The threat against their lives is real. We’ve long been requesting firearms for their protection,” she said in a telephone interview.
“I bought a gun from my own pocket and took the required safety training. I want to make sure that I can protect myself when the need arises,” Panaligan said, who had been receiving threats which she believed were coming from illegal logging operators and timber poachers.
DENR plans
In September last year, following the murder of a forest guard in Palawan province, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu announced plans to arm those tasked to protect the country’s forests.
According to Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance, a multisectoral network working for the conservation and protection of the environment at Sierra Madre, illegal logging has returned to the mountain ranges.
Tropical rainforest
Sierra Madre has the largest remaining tract of old-growth tropical rainforest in the Philippines. Spanning Luzon’s northeastern coast from Cagayan province to Quezon, Sierra Madre has 1.4 million hectares of forest, representing 40 percent of the Philippines’ forest cover.
Last year, London-based nongovernment organization, Global Witness, tagged the Philippines as the most dangerous country in Asia, and third in the world, for environmental “defenders” in 2016, with 28 slain in the Philippines, out of 200 in 24 countries. —DELFIN T. MALLARI JR.