Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Cyclists bike for 24 hours to save mountains
NO MOUNTAIN too high, no valley too low can stop these three bikers from pursuing their dream of bringing back the lush and green mountains of the Cordillera.
How? By biking of course. And that means navigating first the entire province of Benguet for 24 hours.
Impossible? Not for Donni Gonatice, Ben Muni and JP Alipio -- the brains behind the Padyak Para sa Binhi ng Kordilyera, which aims at gathering pledges for the reforestation of denuded mountains of the Cordillera mountain range.
"We are alarmed with the degradation of our forests," Alipio said during the program's launching on Saturday night. He said the plan to raise funds or receive tree saplings as donation for the reforestation was reached after he and his fellow bikers saw the deteriorating state of the region's mountains in several of their biking expeditions.
The Cordillera is the watershed cradle of the North, it being the source of water for lowland provinces. Degradation of its forests has been raised as a concern among various agencies and even organizations, as denudation threatens not only the source of water but also of the ecosystem.
"It was not something that I planned from long ago. But I slowly saw the degradation," Alipio, an environmentalist and a National Geographic Society Grantee, said.
The other two riders, Gonatice, a native of Pangasinan, is a long-distance biker, an artist and one of the founding members of the University of the Philippines (UP)-Baguio Mountaineers, while Muni, a native of Bicol, was a member of the Central Cordillera Traverse Expedition. He is a mountaineer and an avid biker.
The 24-hour bike ride will not be continuous, as the bikers also have to rest in-between. The Cordillera terrain is generally bumpy, winding, and sometimes muddy especially in areas that are not yet concrete.
"In the mountains it is not only the terrain that will define your ride -- there is mud and big rocks but there are also winding roads, endless climbs, long rocky downhills, and every meter that you go up has little less oxygen available to feed your lungs," is how the three bikers define the ride scheduled on November 15.
In an effort to promote re-growth in deforested mountains, the bikers will dedicate each kilometer they are able to cover in a span of 24 hours to establishing a seed bank for the planting of new seedlings.
Pledges are done by signing an IOU form. Pledges can be as low as P1 to as high as P1,000. And instead of cash, tree saplings may also be donated.
At the end of the 24 hours, the bikers will tally the total distance that the team will be able to cover. This will be multiplied by the number of pledges and later on a notice will be sent of how much the total pledge costs.
Bike shops on the other hand, were also asked to donate equipment like tires, brake pads, chains, chain oil, inner tubes, Gatorade, gear and brake cables and spare dropouts, among others. For added information regarding the project, visit their website at www.padyakparasabinhi.multiply.com or email at padyakbinhi@gmail.com.
