Illegal-logging syndicates are back in business in Southern Mindanao and the Caraga regions, the country’s top forestry official said.
“This is now being addressed by the DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resource] in the regions,” Director Ricardo L. Calderon of the DENR’s Forest and Management Bureau (FMB) told the BusinessMirror in an interview.
Calderon said there is also a resurgence of illegal-logging operations in the Cordillera Autonomous Region, and Infanta and Real towns in the province of Quezon.
The observation was based on reports coming from the regions in April, May and June last year.
“Based on their confiscation of illegal logs [‘hot logs’], there are emerging problems on illegal logging in those areas,” Calderon said.
According to Calderon, the DENR-FMB has recommended that concerned agencies sustain their anti-illegal-logging operations in those areas to prevent the illegal activities.
“They have been directed to intensify the anti-illegal-logging campaign in the area. We have instructions sent to concerned DENR field offices,” Calderon said.
Hot logs are logs harvested from natural forests, an act prohibited by Executive Order (EO) 23, which imposes a nationwide log ban on natural and residual forests.
Under the policy, only logs that are harvested from established forest plantations under EO 26, which established the National Greening Program (NGP), or forest plantations run by the private sector with permits are allowed to be processed for various uses.
The DENR confiscates logs even from sawmills that fail to show proper documentation of the logs they process.
The DENR-FMB is seeking a P700-million budget for the implementation of the National Forest Protection Program, which is basically aimed at enforcing the law against destructive activities, such as illegal-logging activities, in the country’s natural and residual forests.
Under the Aquino administration, Environment Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje said the number of illegal-logging hot spots went down to 23 by the end of 2015, from 197 identified illegal-logging hot spots in 2010.
During the period, illegal logs confiscated were donated to the Department of Education and were used to repair school buildings, manufacture of school chairs and other school furniture.
Based on DENR records, a total of 28.5 million board feet of undocumented wood products have been confiscated from 2010 to September 2015.
Most of the seized logs have been converted into essential school furniture, like armchairs and desks, through the P-Noy Bayanihan Project, for use in public elementary and high schools.
Since 2011, more than 146,000 pieces of school furniture have been produced and 369 school buildings have been repaired using seized timber products.
Paje said the enforcement of EO 23 resulted in the filing of 1,370 cases in court and the conviction of close to 200 individuals.
The success of the anti-illegal- logging campaign was partly attributed to the successful implementation of the NGP, in which a total of 1.35 million hectares of open, degraded and denuded forests have been rehabilitated as of December 2015.
