Forest-protection officers, or bantay gubat, will undergo psychological evaluation if the plan to provide them with firearms will push through, an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said.
“We are still studying the idea. Personally, I believe some forest-protection officers should be allowed to carry firearms,” said Nonito Tamayo, director of the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) of the DENR, underscoring the risk DENR employees assigned as forest-protection officers, or even volunteers acting as bantay gubat, face in the performance of their duties.
He added not all forest-protection officers may be qualified to carry firearms and a psychological evaluation may have to be conducted to make sure that those who will be armed must not only be equipped with the skill, but are also emotionally and psychologically fit to carry firearms.
Tamayo said that next year, the DENR, under Secretary Roy A. Cimatu, will pursue the implementation of the Expanded-National Greening Program (E-NGP), although the P2-billion budget cut of the agency, will likely affect the flagship reforestation program.
From the P29-billion budget in 2017, the DENR’s budget was slashed to P27 billion.
This also means that the original E-NGP reforestation target of 229,000 hectares will be downsized to just 125,000 hectares.
However, despite the reduction in the target for next forest plantations, Tamayo said there will be no let up in the campaign against environmental criminals, which include illegal loggers and poachers.
“In fact, we are looking at deploying drones as part of the intensified monitoring of our forest and faster response,” he told the BusinessMirror.
The DENR is also intensifying the campaign against destructive development activities, such as quarrying and mining, slash-and-burn agriculture and illegal wildlife trade, particularly harvesting and hunting of threatened plant and animal wildlife.
It was Cimatu who first came up with the idea of arming the DENR’s forest-protection officers following the death of a barangay captain, Ruben Arzaga, in El Nido, Palawan.
Arzaga, 49, was named “Bayani ng Kalikasan” for sacrificing his life in protecting the forest of Palawan.
He was an active member of the El Nido-Taytay Managed Resource Protected Area Management Board. On September 14, 2017, he was shot dead by suspected illegal loggers whom he and a team from the local environmental law enforcers attempted to apprehend in Sitio Batbat, Villa Libertad.
Two of the suspects were later arrested and charged with murder and four counts of attempted murder.
The attack was the second incident on forest-protection officers by illegal loggers and timber poachers in Palawan within a span of three weeks.
Last August 23 DENR forester Lito Eyala was shot and injured by a suspected timber poacher while he and his team were patroling the mountains of Barangay Bacungan in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan.
Eyala sustained two gunshot wounds one in the back of the body and one in the nape.
The two incidents prompted the DENR chief to seek the help of the police and the military as he vowed to strengthen the agency’s community environment and natural resources offices.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines’s Western Command (Wescom) and the Palawan Philippine National Police was sought to address the issue of illegal logging in Palawan by conducting regular patrol, and the conduct of joint operations in the area.
Wescom will also train forest- protection officers on basic security measures, including the use of firearms for “self-defense.”