When going native can save the planet

The revival of the native — its shift to a hallowed place in our consciousness, its rise from the dumpsite of history — has been a long time coming.

Our “colonial mentality” has pervaded nearly all walks of life and every corner of our archipelago. It turned all Filipinos into, in the words of my American Jesuit high school teacher, of all people, wastebaskets for foreign products.

It also made us devalue whatever was considered “native,” and enabled the desecration of heritage in favor of the modern and the commercial. That psychic steamroller drove the ruin of our natural environment, making our incomparable biodiversity worthless unless it was reduced to logs for export, only to be replaced by fast-growing foreign tree species. Denuded forests, mass extinction, loss of heritage, monocultures everywhere: all are elements of the apocalyptic fate of humankind, with the Philippines perhaps Patient Zero.

But then, within our lifetimes, there’s been a rumbling cultural pushback, a different kind of climate change: the advent of a “native mentality,” evident in the local ethnic fabrics worn by the proudly progressive, native-inspired furniture and design, a “slow food” movement that honors indigenous delicacies, and even the Baybayin tattoos adorning indio bodies. It’s all part of a global awakening to the preciousness of diversity and the local.

The colonial mentality is of course by no means over, just as coal is still king. But solar energy, the most native source of power, is starting to mount a challenge.

All of this is by way of contextualizing a new book on native trees. “Alay” is a handsome catalog of the 305 Philippine native tree species in a private arboretum founded by the former environment and natural resources secretary, Victor O. Ramos.

“Alay” is a user-friendly guide for curating similar sanctuaries for indigenous and endemic trees, and offers a path towards a different type of land development, where trees and natural amenities are the centerpiece for a low-impact human community (i.e., endemic trees are naturally found only in the Philippines, while indigenous species are native trees that can also be found outside the Philippines).

A development model and lifestyle that revolve around native trees may also be the key to avoiding a premature human extinction.

That this haven for native trees was established by the former head of the DENR is itself a critical statement, as this is the same government agency with a history of giving out the logging permits that devastated much of the Philippines’ natural forests. Then it tried to compensate with an ill-advised and exorbitant reforestation program dominated by monoculture tree-planting projects comprised of fast-growing foreign, or “exotic,” tree species, especially mahogany, which makes land notoriously inhospitable to native trees, plants, and wildlife.

Serving during the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos (no relation), Victor Ramos of course was just one in a long line of DENR secretaries, but among the more reform-minded. As an environmental reporter during his time at the DENR, I covered his earnest efforts to reverse the damage done by his predecessors. Little did the press corps then know that the low-profile Ramos was starting his own private forestry project but with a decidedly wiser focus.

Thus, his arboretum in Pangasinan is, if not an act of contrition, at least proof of enlightenment and a strong message to all of his successors. Ramos recalls in the book that at a tree-planting event for his birthday at his newly acquired property, the DENR’s own foresters brought mostly exotics like mahogany and gmelina. These non-native species are still being planted on a wide scale at the expense of indigenous species. So the current DENR could do much worse than distribute this book to all of its forestry personnel as part of an overhaul of its approach to reforestation.

The book is a project of the Philippine Native Tree Enthusiasts (PNTE) movement, which started as a Facebook group but which has since spawned numerous field trips, meet-ups, and the collaboration on “Alay.”

Reflecting this growing interest in native trees, “Alay” is just the latest in a series of ground-breaking reference books, including the encyclopedic “Philippine Native Trees 101-303,” published in the last ten years by the Green Convergence NGO coalition; separate guidebooks on the indigenous trees on the UPLB campus and the grounds of the Marine Science Institute at UP Diliman (both published in 2017); and the even more recent two volumes on the native trees planted in Ayala Westgrove, a private subdivision in Silang, Cavite known for its meticulous care and documentation of its natural environment. (Disclosure: my family is a Westgrove property owner.)

These books were produced by a gamut of native-tree advocates: academics, state universities, NGOs, private developers, and private landowners. Local governments would do well to follow their lead and establish indigenous tree sanctuaries featuring species native to their place.

Some of the tree enthusiasts behind the books mentioned above have departed this earth, such as the National Scientist Dr. Ed Gomez, who planted nearly 150 tree species on UP Diliman’s campus. But it’s consoling to think what they left behind literally live on and continue to make an impact on our environment and quality of life.

 “Alay” was written by Pastor L. Malabrigo Jr. and Arthur Glenn A. Umali, professors of forestry based at the UPLB, which gives the volume scientific authority. But there is also an essay by Ramos describing his land’s journey from a newly purchased four-hectare rice farm cum wetlands to the biodiversity showcase visited by students and nature lovers today. Among his regrets was not grouping his trees by taxonomic family “as a serious arboretum should do,” but that’s only because he planted trees as seedlings became available and not according to a strict scientific scheme. (Grouping trees by the Lamiaceae family, for example, would have Ramos’s Molave trees in the same area as his Lagundi and Philippine Teak trees.)

Availability of native seedlings is still a problem even today, but the trade is now facilitated by all the online interaction among tree enthusiasts.

Each tree species in the arboretum is given a page in the book with its common name accompanied by its scientific one, as well as photos, its conservation status, and its distribution in the Philippines. We learn that this nature refuge harbors several critically endangered species, such as the endemic Katmon-sibuyan, its natural habitat found only on Sibuyan Island in Panay.

The authors also highlight fascinating tidbits in the brief write-ups accompanying each tree species, mostly pertaining to the broad range of uses of these trees through the centuries. The Dita (Alstonia scholaris), for example, has been used for making both coffins and blackboards (hence the “scholaris” in its scientific name).

Much of the information is on the trees’ known medicinal uses. For instance, while the bark of the Lumbang evergreen tree (Aleurites moluccanus) is used to treat wounds, its leaves are supposedly an antidote to food poisoning, and with a little boiling, the same leaves can relieve diarrhea; the fruit kernels supposedly have laxative properties, and even its seeds have been deployed to address bad breath. The Kamuning’s flowers are known for their powerful fragrance, but this book also makes the eyebrow-raising claim that its leaves and root bark are a remedy for both venereal disease and hysteria, among other ailments.

The authors do not provide guidance on the relative effectiveness of these tree-based treatments or warnings on what shouldn’t be tried at home. One presumes there are more scientific tomes on proven natural remedies derived from these tree species.

Combing through this book recalls how embedded native trees are in our culture, as one realizes that many familiar place names like Antipolo, Dao, and Iloilo were actually common tree names first, giving a sense of the vanished abundance of certain species in particular localities. This connection of course does not apply to famous city streets named after Kamuning, Guijo, Yakal and many other species, streets that had nothing to do with the trees’ natural habitats. And I never knew until I saw this book that a Cubao beer garden of my youth, Alibangbang, was also the name of an ornamental tree with butterfly-shaped leaves and wood traditionally used to make shoe heels. All of those trees, by the way, are in the Ramos arboretum.

While collecting and maintaining native trees, some of them pricey even as seedlings, may appear to cynics as a woke kind of vanity project, this is not like accumulating luxury cars. Trees are a passion that can create benefits far beyond the shade and personal satisfaction enjoyed by the enthusiast. Trees are the proverbial lungs of the earth, the planet’s carbon sinks, and, if preserved in their manifold splendor, an essential part of humankind’s medicine cabinets for future diseases. Majestic native trees displayed proudly anywhere can only inspire other property owners to grow them as well.

The word “nativist” has often applied to a repressive policy of preferring native-born people and rejecting foreigners in society. But perhaps the word’s meaning can now be extended to an enlightened attitude towards trees and given a more constructive, hopeful connotation. Being nativist in this arboreal context is just common sense and a formula for survival.

Like the comeback of the native in other realms, a preference for indigenous trees is simply the proper re-ordering of our priorities, and a celebration of our heritage and diversity.

“Alay” is available on Lazada, Popular Bookstore in QC, and through the PNTE group: cmtungol1@yahoo.com. —JCB, GMA News