Chris Panganiban, Inquirer Mindanao, 3 Oct 13;
STA. JOSEFA, Agusan del Sur, Philippines—Some people apparently failed to learn their lesson from last year’s devastation triggered by Typhoon “Pablo” on two mountain villages here where three people had been killed, officials said.
Since Tuesday evening, a massive anti-logging operation by a team led by Mayor Jann Ruby Otero in the 900-hectare timberland areas in Awao here under the Community Based Forest Management Program, yielded hundreds of fallen trees.
The village was among two areas hardest hit by Pablo here, where practically all houses were wiped out and three residents were killed by a landslide in 2012.
Otero said even as the operation in Awao was intended against illegal logging, he was still surprised to find out that the volume of illegal logs hidden in four corners of the village was more than what they had expected.
In all, the total number of logs that the team had uncovered was 400, he said.
Otero said a similar operation has started in the nearby village of Sayon, the other village that Pablo had ravaged.
Marvin Mentero, Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Officer, said it was apparent that residents of Awao knew what was happening there and that they obviously did not learn their lesson when Pablo struck their village.
He said the raiding team was even confronted by an angry resident, who said: “Why are you interfering with this petty business?”
Mentero said the demeanor of that villager might reflect that of other villagers, whom he said, must have been given promise by those behind the illegal logging activities, particularly on making large sums money from it.
“I believed there’s somebody behind this,” he said.
Amado Roxas, federation chair of the people’s organization tasked to manage the CBFM in the said villages, admitted that illegal fallen lauan logs were being secretly transported to a veneer processing plant based in Sta. Isabel village, which is allegedly owned by the family of a politician.
“We cannot stop them because we were being threatened through text messages,” Roxas told the INQUIRER.
He said some of the logs that the team had seized might have felled by Pablo wake but the other trees were deliberately cut.
Otero said local businessmen engaged in wood industry and even local politicians involved in the unabated illegal-logging activities in the mountain villages will be prosecuted.
“Definitely, heads will roll with the logs that rolled,” Otero said.
Otero said what was more painful to him was that the villages had recently been replanted with trees through the P20-million Community Based Resource Management Program but the replanting efforts—aimed at regaining the forest cover lost after Pablo—would be wasted with the continued illegal logging activities there.
