Greening of bare Mt. Samat starts

Denuded Mt. Samat in Bataan province will be green again.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said it had planted 9,000 hardwood seedlings at the foot of the mountain as part of its reforestation program.

According to the DENR, the replanting area covered 18 of some 150 hectares in the municipality of Bagac that need to be reforested.

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said they planted narra seedlings, a valuable hardwood timber.

The DENR project is the second in a series of tree planting activities lined up by the department for its employees under Executive Order No. 26, which calls for the implementation of a National Greening Program.

The reforestation program aims to plant 1.5 billion trees on some 1.5 million hectares from 2011 to 2016, more than double the area planted by the government of 730,000 hectares in the past 25 years.

In Bagac, Paje said a village organization called “Association of Mountain Farmers of Sitio Kinainisan” (AMFSK), composed of 30 households in the barangay, had pledged to take care of the newly-planted seedlings.

AMFSK is a holder of a 25-year Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA) issued by the DENR, covering some 315 hectares.

“We want to stress that the objective of this tree planting under the NGP is to grow and not for show. For this reason, we are involving communities within or near planting sites as they will be responsible for taking care of the seedlings,” Paje said.

The DENR has enlisted upland communities to serve as “stewards of the forests” and reap the economic benefits from the reforestation project

Under EO 26, all government employees and students are required to plant 10 seedlings a year.  The private sector is encouraged to take part in similar activities, and to coordinate with a DENR office nearest them for the identification of planting sites and for technical assistance.

Among the areas targeted for planting are forest lands, mangroves and protected areas, ancestral domains, civil and military reservations, urban areas under the greening plan of local government units, inactive and abandoned mines, and other suitable lands.

DENR officials and employees previously planted some 2,000 seedlings of narra and kupang at the Ipo watershed in San Mateo village, Norzagaray, Bulacan.