To mark the 100th birthday celebration of the late South African President Nelson Mandela, Senator Cynthia A. Villar and South Africa Ambassador to the Philippines Martin Slabber on Wednesday led the planting of 100 trees at the Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park.
Villar, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, was the guest of honor of the event, which was organized by United Nations Information Centre Manila.
“Let us all continue to work together to bring back ecological balance, which has been severely affected by climate change caused by man’s abuse of our natural resources,” said Villar.
She noted that activities like this encourage the public to stop their environmental negligence and do something to bring back the grandeur of Mother Nature.
“We should all learn to care for our environment. The damages made on our natural resources have been very costly, as we have all recently experienced when floods inundated our streets due to incessant strong rains,” Villar added.
Over 500 participants joined the senator and the ambassador in the tree-planting activity.
The United Nations marks July 18 of every year as Nelson Mandela International Day to remember his legacy as a human rights lawyer, a prisoner of conscience, an international peacemaker and the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
Last year, UNIC Manila conducted a cleanup drive at Las Pinas-Paranaque Wetland Park and picked it as its focus venue for its future environmental activities.
The park was declared as the country’s first critical habitat in 2007. It covers around 175 hectares of wetland ecosystem and consists of two islands—Freedom Island and Long Island—with mangroves, ponds and lagoons, mudflats, salt marshes, and mixed beach forest all over.
On March 15, 2013, the park was recognized as a wetland of international importance by the Ramsar Convention because of the critical role it plays in the survival of threatened, restricted-range and congregatory bird species. It is the sixth Ramsar Site in the country to date.
The park was also declared a protected area under Republic Act 11038 or the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System Act, signed into law by President Duterte on June 22, 2018.