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After 20 years, forest crusaders reap rewards for conserving resources
MAASIN CITY, Southern Leyte - Loud and shrill, the roar of the chainsaw pierced through the calm of a plantation forest deep in the mountains near Southern Leyte's capital city of Maasin.
As the chainsaw operator sliced the trunk of an imposing mahogany tree, 47-year-old Florentino Saludo watched intently from a distance, his face a blank canvas.
It didn't take long before the towering tree began to collapse to the ground. As soon as the dust and leaves had settled, a wave of emotion finally overcame Saludo.
"That's what I always say. We took care of it for so long and then we see it just get cut like that," said Saludo in Filipino, briefly pausing before finishing his statement, "Masakit talaga, masakit."
It took sometime before the forest farmers from Southern Leyte like Saludo could accept that this is the way of life in the forest, as proclaimed in postcards: a tree is born, a tree dies, the forest lives forever.
Saludo is the president of the Youth Innovators for Social and Environmental Development Association (YISEDA), a local people's organization in charge of a community-based forest management project that aims to protect remaining natural forests and lead reforestation efforts in Maasin.
One rainy day in September, Saludo took a group of visiting journalists from Manila to the project site, sharing not only their accomplishments in community-led sustainable forestry management but also the hurdles they overcame in the last two decades.
Cutting the mahogany tree was only one way of demonstrating the efficient harvesting practices observed in their forest domain. As part of their project commitment, members of YISEDA have decided they will no longer tolerate illegal logging, and instead harvest only those trees that they themselves have planted.
Interestingly, Saludo's father confesses that he was once an illegal logger, but he has since mended his ways.
Saludo himself had seen the growth of the mahogany tree that they just harvested since the time it was planted almost 20 years ago, in 1992, as part of reforestation efforts in the area at the time. That's why nobody could blame Saludo if he had developed an attachment to the tree.
YISEDA vice president Leo Vanzuela says it is not unusual for many of their members to become averse to logging after working so hard in preserving the forest. "Sinasabi ng iba, 'Ano puputulin na natin?' Sabi naman namin ay huwag na. Pinagpaguran natin iyan. Dugo't pawis natin iyan... Magkapatayan na huwag lang putulin iyan," he said.
At first, only a handful of villagers were willing to join the advocacy of YISEDA, which started its crusade on forest conservation as early as 1993. In the next 14 years, Saludo said they managed to protect the forest with no government funding. They patrolled the mountains at least twice a month, looking for signs of kaingin (slash-and-burn farming) or illegal logging.
In the early years, when community interest was not yet at an all-time high, Saludo emphasized the importance of becoming role models for other villagers. "Kung may commitment ang leaders, susunod ang members. We should not only be role models but also be transparent," he said.
Once everyone started joining the bandwagon, they soon realized that they were not only engaged in an environmental cause but would also reap economic rewards. There were livelihood benefits to be derived from protecting the forests.
However, he lamented that some government policies in forest management have become an added burden to local groups instead of making things easier for the farmers.
These include stringent policies in securing resource use permits and environmental compliance certificates, and the requirement for a 100-percent inventory of trees in the proposed CBFM area.
"What if the (farmers) don't have the money, don't have the capability and the skills to do the inventory, hindi kaya iyan," Abalus said.
Fortunately for YISEDA, the members manage to get by with GIZ's help. But Abalus is concerned about groups that are left to fend for themselves. "Under normal conditions, without support from the outside, hindi kaya iyon. So what kind of a policy is that? Mali iyon," he insisted.
Abalus said his team is planning to bring up the matter with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which is in charge of forest policy and protection in the country.
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In recent years, YISEDA members were trained to cultivate seedlings from mature trees. With funding from the German aid agency Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the organization buys the seedlings and assigns members who will plant the young trees across 400 hectares of land at the San Francisco Nature's Park, a mountain range that covers five barangays in Maasin.
The males in the family take charge of the tedious and exhausting planting activities, while the housewives nurture the seedlings. Saludo, a father of one, said the children in their community are advised to focus on their studies, but some insist on joining their parents in planting trees.
"Kapag weekend at walang pasok, may mga bata talaga na sumasama sa amin. Talagang family affair na rin itong ginagawa namin," Saludo proudly said.
Apart from reforestation, YISEDA has also initiated agro-forestry activities to generate additional income. They plant fruit trees, vegetables such as eggplants and tomatoes, and root crops like gabi and kamote (sweet potato).
Cash income also comes from harvested trees, such as the 40-foot mahogany tree that Saludo's team had just cut down. Timber from the tree could fetch more than P5,000 once it is processed into market-sized planks used for construction, he said.
Under their CBFM agreement with the government, YISEDA can only cut trees from plantation areas measuring at least 30 centimeters in diameter. It usually takes around 20 years for one tree to reach this size, officials said. This is why it is only recently that YISEDA members have started reaping the benefits from the first trees that they planted in the early 1990s.
YISEDA has a timber-processing plant at the foot of the mountain, and has begun cutting the logs into smaller pieces. But until now, the wood planks sit quietly in their storage room.
Rogelio Abalus, one of the technical staff assisting YISEDA, explains the locals’ behavior. "Sila mismo, parang di pa sila ready ibenta ang mga kahoy namin. They are saying, 'Naaawa kami sa kahoy namin kaya we are holding these back,'" he recounted.
Saludo said there are plans to create added value for the raw timber by turning them into wooden furniture, which can then be sold at a higher price.
Cut in half
But the community does not have to wait for the town to evolve into a furniture-making center in order to reap the benefits from sustainable forest management.
This early, Saludo's cousin Ambrosio is thankful that he shifted to seedling production and agro-forestry for a living. The 47-year-old farmer had to borrow money for his appendectomy in January 2009, leaving him with a P40,000 debt.
Last year, he started selling seedlings for lauan, sagimsiman, mahogany, and balobo at four pesos each. He has earned almost P20,000 so far, enough to cut his debt by half. "Kung wala pa itong ganito, baka baon pa rin ako sa utang," Ambrosio told GMA News Online.
Apart from the income, local villagers have also begun to appreciate the impact of forest conservation as an adaptation tool in the current wave of climate change. By preserving their abundant forests, the mountains not only remain intact and free from any danger of landslides, but also serve as a steady conduit of rainwater both for the villagers' consumption and also for irrigating their tree plantations.
As an added bonus or, as GIZ officials like Abalus refer to it, the "icing on the cake," these green communities contribute in a huge way to easing the greenhouse effect - that warms the planet - through a global strategy known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation-plus (REDD+).
Abalus explains that every tree preserved will not only slash the amount of carbon dioxide - a key factor in turning the earth into a huge greenhouse - in the air because of the absorption process of vegetation, but it will also keep the tree's carbon component locked in. Carbon dioxide is released into the air when trees are burned, like what happens in large-scale slash and burn farming.
Ricardo Tomo, provincial director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said Southern Leyte was a perfect pilot area for the GIZ's project because the local government has been enforcing a logging ban since the 1970s, way before President Benigno Aquino III issued Executive Order 23 in February this year that imposed a moratorium on logging in natural and residual forests.
However, he admitted that there are still isolated cases when villagers try to sneak logs out of the island province.
Just the same, due to its trailblazing efforts, President Aquino awarded YISEDA as the best people's organization in Southern Leyte in 2010. - Photos by Mark Merueñas and Joe Galvez/YA, GMA News
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