BAGUIO CITY—The Cordillera region’s forest cover has risen by nearly 50 percent over the past five years after the aggressive implementation of the National Greening Program, one of the government’s major reforestation projects.
Engineer Ralph Pablo, Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Cordillera Autonomous Region executive director, said that from a critical 43-percent forest cover in 2011, the region has exceeded its target of 100,000 hectares of lands reforested under the NGP.
Based on the geographic information system or Google Maps scanning, the plantation areas in 2011 to 2013 are visibly forested, while the areas planted from 2014 to 2016 are not yet noticeable “because the planted trees are still growing,” Pablo said.
“We are aggressive in the implementation of the NGP because of the new program of the present administration, the enhanced NGP. We want to sustain the identity of the Cordillera as a watershed cradle of Northern Luzon and improve the forest cover of barren areas in the region, which are suitable for the growing of assorted trees,” he stressed.
Of the total 1.85-million hectares in Cordillera, more than 1.5 million hectares are classified as forest reservations, while the remaining land areas are either alienable and disposable land or agricultural land.
From the 645,000 hectares of forest cover of the region in 2011, it has risen to some 746,000 hectares, improving the region’s environment, the DENR official said.
Some challenges in the NGP’s implementation were areas that are not favorable to planting trees and the rocky portions of mountains that are not conducive toward growing any type of tree, he added.
The focus of the enhanced NGP, Pablo said, is the planting of agro-forestry trees to serve as an added source of income for the communities so they will be empowered to preserve and protect the forest cover and be aggressive in increasing the tree population in the mountains.
The DENR-CAR will empower the people living in the different communities within the forests to be the stewards of the forests and for the people to be able to co-exist with the trees that serve as the neutralizer of the pollutants in the air.
Pablo appealed to individuals and groups interested to partner with the government in sustaining the region’s forest cover to visit the nearest environment offices and learn how the enhanced NGP will be undertaken.
