Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya—For the past 10 years, FCF Minerals Corp. has planted more than 1.7-million trees as part of its biodiversity and tree planting program.
Ian Moller, the firm’s general manager for Sustainability, said Wednesday this was achieved through a series of massive tree planting activities in partnership with the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office and officials, students and villagers of barangay Runruno and Darubba in Quezon town.
Runruno hosts FCF Mineral’s gold-molybdenum project.
Moller said they have already planted trees in 196.65 hectares within and outside barangay Runruno.
“We also introduced the ‘Adopt a School’ Program where tree planting activities were participated by members of our company with the teachers, schoolers and parents of host schools,” he added.
Every tree planting activity, Moller said, is reinforced by advocacy sessions offering topics such as “Connecting People to Nature,” the Philippine Biodiversity and Bio-offsetting Program of the company.
“The responsibility of maintaining and caring for the trees and the environment comes after every tree planting activity. It should be inculcated continuously to our stakeholders,” Moller said.
The tree planting activities of the mine firm also helps in their progressive rehabilitation.
FCF Minerals also established the Mining Forest Program to create a sense of ownership and involvement among the villagers on environment protection.
“The purpose of the rehabilitation program is to restore back the forest back to its original state if possible or enhance it than its current state,” Moller stressed.
Aside from its impact on environment protection, the MFP also provides income for the community through their production of various crops through intercropping, technically assisted by the company.
This is also being sustained through seedling donations and creation of tree nurseries for tree seedling production.
With the established tree nurseries, the firm has already donated more than 30,000 tree seedling varieties such as Gmelina, cacao, mixed strands of gmelina and mahogany, coffee, and mixed strands of cacao and coffee.
“With the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, we have already trained villagers on seedling production. Aside from the socio-economic benefits of the project, the rehabilitation program also benefits the environment by compensating its greenhouse gas emissions,” Moller said.