Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol on Monday said the governors of Laguna and Rizal and mayors of the towns and cities surrounding Laguna de Bay, along with fisher folk leaders and other agencies, will meet with officials of the Department of Agriculture on Tuesday to finalize the plan for the lake’s rehabilitation.
“The meeting with the LGU executives, heads of agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Laguna Lake Development Authority and stakeholders living around the lake will put the finishing touches to ‘Project Balik Sigla sa Ilog at Lawa’ (Bringing Back Life to Rivers and Lakes),” Piñol said.
The Agriculture department earlier said major river basins and lakes will be seeded with fingerlings of indigenous and noninvasive fish species over the next five years in a program called “Project Basil” after the plan’s acronym in Filipino.
The National Inland Fisheries Enhancement Program of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, an agency under the DA, was designed to provide Filipinos with greater access to available food, and address poverty and hunger in the countryside.
Project Basil has identified seven major lakes and six major river basins all over the country as the initial areas targeted for the fingerlings seeding.
The biggest of the first group of major lakes is Laguna de Bay with 90,000 hectares, followed by Lake Lanao (34,700 hectares), Taal (23,400 hectares), Mainit in Surigao del Norte (17,300 hectares), Naujan in Oriental Mindoro (11,000 hectares), Buluan in Maguindanao (6,500 hectares) and Sebu in South Cotabato (354 hectares).
The major rivers are the Cagayan River Basin (2.5 million hectares), Mindanao River Basin (2.3 million hectares), Agusan River Basin (one million hectares), Pampanga River Basin (974,000 hectares) Abra River Basin (512,500 hectares) and Bicol River Basin (377,100 hectares).
Among the indigenous species to be seeded in the waterways are Ayungin, Biya, Kanduli, Martinique, the native catfish or “hito” and the black head eel or “igat.”
Acceptable fish species that are not considered threats to the ecological balance in the lakes and rivers, like tilapia and bangus, will also be introduced.
“Project Basil intends to clean up, rehabilitate and bring back Laguna de Bay to its old glorious and prosperous days when fishermen freely caught a lot of fish from the lake,” Piñol said.
Piñol said the project is being initiated in view of the recent directive by President Rody Duterte to the DENR and LLDA to dismantle the fish pens because the structures have clogged up the lake and small fishermen have virtually been dislocated from their traditional fishing grounds where they used to catch such indigenous species as kanduli, ayungin and biya.
“Project Basil intends to re-populate the lake with an estimated five million fingerlings of indigenous species including Bangus and Tilapia which could be harvested after six months,” said Piñol.
Piñol said that before the project could be implemented, a massive clean-up of the Lake will be undertaken, with the DA engaging local fishermen by giving them the FB Pagbabago fiberglass fishing boats which they will initially use to gather garbage and plastics floating in the Lake.
“The LGUs will also be asked to monitor the continued dumping of industrial wastes and effluence into the Lake by factories around it while the DENR is expected to exercise its powers to close down any facility which pollutes the lake,” said Piñol.
Piñol said the LLDA will be asked to identify other sources of livelihood for the fisher folk families living around the lake who will be deprived of income during the six-month closed fishing season.
“The LLDA is also expected to make recommendations to the DA-BFAR on where to establish fish landings or fish ports where fishermen later would bring their catch to be delivered to the market,” he said.