SABLAYAN, Occidental Mindoro—The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has approved the cutting of 10,9045 trees standing inside the VAST Amnay Watershed listed by the department itself as a “critical watershed area,” Manila Standard learned.
DENR Mimaropa Regional Director Natividad Y. Bernardino recently granted the request of Onyo Calamita, of the local Alangan tribe, to cut gmelina trees within the area covered by a certificate of ancestral domain title located in Bgy. Pag-asa here.
The Amnay River, one of this island’s biggest rivers, provides irrigation water to this municipality’s five top rice-producing barangays, namely, Claudia Salgado, Lagnas, Elvita, Pag-asa and Victoria.
Other Mangyan leaders of the Alangan tribe expressed their opposition to the DENR memorandum, saying that the “area belongs to our ancestral land and neither do they gave permission to the DENR nor Calamita to cut trees inside the watershed.”
“There is no permission or consent that our tribe made to Onyo Calamita to dispense with or cut off the plants or trees covered by our ancestral land,” they said in a complaint addressed to Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu.
The letter was signed by Mangyan Mayor Danny Aldaba and 14 other tribal leaders. The tribal leaders want Cimatu to cancel the permit.
The tree-cutting permit allows the holder to fell 10,045 gmelina trees with equivalent gross volume of 8,512.42 cubic meters located on 98,463.4892 hectares of the watershed inside the ancestral domain of the Mangyans.
Requesting anonymity, a Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) forest ranger told the Standard that aside from gmelina trees, other prohibited hardwood species, such as narra, mulawin and lawaan, among other forest trees, could also be found inside the watershed.
The ranger explained that once the deforestation pushes through and the tree-cutting permit is not cancelled as prayed for by the natives, massive flooding, erosion, and landslides will occur that “may totally submerge the whole of Sablayan.”
This developed as a composite team from the DENR, local media, and prison guards of the Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm (SPPF) seized 3,500 board feet of illegally-cut and prohibited hardwood inside the prison reservation in sitio Masantol, Pasugi, Bgy. Malisbong.
SPPF officials Orlando G. Oane, Rolando G. Felipe, Cayetano S. Fang, Rudy A. Racsa and Tim Jake Polilen earlier asked the DENR-Cenro based here in Sablayan to investigate the alleged involvement of SPPF Superintendent Arturo Sabadisto in illegal logging activities inside the reservation.
Two unregistered chain saws were also found inside the SPPF warehouse by the DENR investigating team.
Cenro Investigators Roderick S. Orpilla and Wilfredo T. Aquino said in its investigation report that they have been receiving text messages from SPPF civilian employees that some prison officials are allegedly involved in illegal cutting of trees inside the prison reservation using inmates as lumberjacks.
In his visit this week in connection with the implementation of Republic Act No. 10575 or the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Modernization Act of 2013, Director Ronald de la Rosa said that “massive internal cleansing in the Bureau is underway.”
He stressed that he would not tolerate “collaboration among corrections officers and inmates” in committing corruption inside the BuCor.
“I’ll be hard on you!” De la Rosa, the former Philippine National Police chief, stressed.
A folder containing several complaints, including illegal logging activities within the prison reservation involving some SPPF officials, was passed to De la Rosa after his speech.