Philippines foils tree smugglers

Yahoo News 1 Jul 09;

MANILA (AFP) – Wildlife officials have foiled an apparent attempt to smuggle rare 200-year-old trees out of the Philippines, the government said Wednesday.

Officers seized 35 Podocarpus costalis trees at a gardening shop in Calamba, south of Manila after the government rejected their owner's application for a permit to transport the rare conifers, considered an endangered species, to the port of Manila.

Known locally as "igem-dagat", the short evergreen trees grow only in the tiny northern Philippine island of Calayan and nearby Taiwan, and are prized as garden plants, the environment and natural resources department said in a statement.

The conifer grows up to three metres (10 feet) tall and has a smooth, greenish bark, horizontally spreading branches and foliage buds of long, triangular scales.

"Igem-dagat is included in the list of threatened species being protected by the government. Its trading is strictly regulated," Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Joselito Atienza said.

The government suspects the trees would likely have been shipped abroad. It did not reveal the exact date of the seizure.

The person seeking to transport the trees, a local official in the northern province of Cagayan, claimed they were planted on private land in the north in 1975.

However, government experts estimate the slow-growing trees could be anywhere between 70 and 200 years old and could have only been taken from the wild.

"Some of the trees would take two pairs of arms to encircle their trunks. As such, these trees could not have been planted in 1975," according to the report of the officials who seized the trees.